Word: trusts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...spokeswoman Renee Rashid-Merem says the money is kept separate from the company's cash reserves under an agreement approved by the U.S. District Court in Detroit, which resulted from a "friendly" lawsuit that was part of the process that created the trust. The money can't be used for anything other than retiree health care. "We can't access it," she says...
...stretching the financial reserves of the domestic companies. By 2020, GM, which has the largest number of retired employees, will have transferred some $23 billion to the new Voluntary Employee Benefit Association (VEBA), created by the contract. (That amount includes the $13.5 billion GM has already injected into the trust, plus another $9.5 billion yet to be contributed.) Ford owes $13.6 billion to its VEBA, and Chrysler, which doesn't make its finances public, owes between $6 billion and $9 billion to its new retiree-health-care trust...
...health-care benefits have become more important, he says. "More than two-thirds of workers taking early retirement aren't eligible for Medicare. A lot of them didn't even want to retire," he says. UAW president Ron Gettelfinger said in the fall of 2007 that the VEBA trusts would protect the health care of retirees and eligible dependents for the next 80 years. However, that always depended on the health of the company. The promise is now suspect, says Stephen Diamond, an associate professor of law at Santa Clara University in California who has studied the auto-industry VEBAs...
...what becomes of the trusts should Washington say no to a bailout? Assets already paid into the VEBA trust would probably be safe if GM filed for bankruptcy, says Diamond. But chances of getting the deferred $1.7 billion back in a bankruptcy court are virtually nil. It's also unlikely that the assets in the trust will last 80 years, since bankrupt automakers would be unlikely to make all the future trust contributions. "My guess is the trust would last 20 years," says Diamond. "It's a very difficult situation. Autoworkers were sold a pile of goods by the union...
...asked Beckett. "Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use. There are few greater potential threats to our economies, too, but also to peace and security itself." Speaking outside the debate, Philip E. Clapp, former president of the New York City-based National Environmental Trust (who died this year), warned: "Global warming is no longer just an environmental issue. It is a rapidly advancing human crisis threatening millions of people, which could undermine the shaky political stability of countries from Southern Africa to the Middle East and South East Asia...