Word: pension
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...with Salerno's distant cousin Frank and son Robert, a retired New York City cop. Bennett has investigated and dismantled the union's skimming arrangement, which operated through most of the 1980s. While employers were obligated to make payments on behalf of employees to the local's health and pension plans, an estimated 1,600 parking-lot attendants were kept out of the union and its funds, Bennett says. The workers, most of them illegal aliens from Central and South America, were paid an illegally low wage of $4 to $7 an hour, in violation of union- employer contracts...
...contract in 1989 that began to treat all workers as union members. But there was a major catch: the new contract designated two classes of employees, "A" workers and "B" workers. The lower class consisted of those who had made no recorded contributions to the local's health and pension plans during the previous three years. They could now legally be paid just $6 an hour, or $240 a week, about half the amount that "A" workers received. In essence, says Bennett, those who had been cheated before 1989 were being cheated again by being paid subpar wages...
Though many Americans are worried that their poorly invested pension funds might go bust and leave them penniless in retirement, one class of employees has no such concerns: top federal officials. It's not just that their benefits are guaranteed by the U.S. Treasury and thus protected from the economic shocks that have wrecked some company plans. Thanks to a generous cost of living index scheme that would be extremely rare in private industry -- a plan that the U.S. Congress designed mainly for its own benefit -- many former federal officeholders actually make more for not working than they ever...
Tighter regulation of pension plans is sorely needed. The U.S. cannot afford another massive bailout program. In addition, as the population ages, U.S. workers will face a growing burden of responsibility to care for the aged. Those hard-earned pensions represent more than precious protection for elderly Americans: they are also assets that the U.S. cannot afford to squander...
BUSINESS: Pension Peril...