Word: pension
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Another legacy of GM's pact with the union is its crushing pension burden. Having shed so many workers in previous rounds of cost cutting, GM finds itself in a demographic choke hold--paying for the pensions and health care of 400,000 retirees (plus benefits for their dependents)--with a shrinking company. GM's strongest rivals, such as Toyota and Nissan, haven't gone through decades of downsizing and don't bear that lopsided burden. At GM, each U.S. worker's production has to support 2.5 retirees, adding an average of $2,200 in legacy costs to the price...
Wagoner is playing an actuarial waiting game, betting that as the retiree population declines, health and pension costs will fall, helping the company swing to profitability. But on Wall Street, worries about how a smaller GM will pay its retiree obligations have sent its securities plummeting. GM says it owes $89 billion to current and future retirees, and if GM's pension plan were terminated tomorrow, it would be $31 billion short, according to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. GM says its pension obligations are more than fully funded and it has no intention of terminating its plan...
...foreign manufacturers don't carry the legacy costs that drag U.S. companies down. Workers at foreign companies' nonunion shops make roughly the same in wages and benefits as unionized employees in Detroit. But Asian and European firms, with younger workforces in the U.S., aren't saddled with crippling pension and health-care obligations. GM spends $1,525 per vehicle in the U.S. on health care, compared with $300 per vehicle at Toyota...
...corporations did not provide defined-benefit pensions out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it because their workers were united in unions powerful enough to demand these benefits. With unions weak and shrinking, corporations feel free to discard what they regard as an onerous burden. A good legal reform would be to treat a pension obligation as a preferred creditor in any corporate bankruptcy proceeding or give pension trusts the first claim to all corporate assets. CHARLIE ROSENBERG Milwaukee...
...secure passage of a popular gun-control law and environmental measures. But perhaps because success came so easy, he stopped playing the role of consensus builder. After all, many of the ballot initiatives he pushed--as well as his failed effort earlier this year to bring the costly public pension system under control--made sense. California's redistricting virtually ensures that incumbents never lose, the state continues to spend beyond its means, and its schools need an upgrade. But by attacking nurses, teachers and other public employees rather than negotiating with them, Schwarzenegger came across as a bully...