The collapsing middle class- now they are going after pensions.

[freshwest]

28. I'm not sure about the profit angle, but my report from my corporate pension was coming more often.

And they were threatening, more or less, to terminate the plan as they are no longer being paid in the same amount as they are sending out. They were sending the notices out more regularly and I figured it meant that my company pension would not be coming, after all.

It was one of the terms of the negotiated contract, that if the corporation (which kept changing its name and headquarters) was bringing in less income than was being paid to current retirees out of the accumulated trust fund, the amount would be reduced for everyone.

I don't see how this had to do with profits as the OP says, because they need the profits from current business to keep going, don't they?

The trust fund currently supports about a 100K people, their dependents and medical care. Iit is anticipated to support over a quarter million in the next three years. They indicated if incoming was reduced to a certain percent, since it was already 25% less than outgoing, they would send a lump payment and that would be the end of their obligation. Depressing, but there's not as much money flowing around as there was.

They began to refer to our rights to seek full or partial payments of what they would not be able to pay through the federal program, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. It has a deficit from having to guarantee the pensions of people whose corporations have come on hard times, been sold out, gone out of business or otherwise are not making their payments.

Suddenly my pension has been returned to the exact same company name I started with, at the same city I worked in, after all these years. It says this notice of the plan 'replaces and supersedes all the summaries of material modifications' that had been sent, that said we might have to go to the PBGC. The talk of turning us over to the PBGC has been deleted and also the talk of terminating the plan suddenly stopped.

If Obama or this legislation had anything to do with it, I'm grateful, because I need that pension. It mentioned several times about additional coverage for people who were disabled. So I truly don't know if the sky is falling or not here. Better informed people than me will say.

Good luck for your family in getting theirs. Frankly, I won't really believe it until I get that first check...