I saw on CBS where CEO's are cutting into workers pensions to keep

[lonestarnot]

their pensions on the upswing. The pie chart was ugly! Anyone have a link to this story. An airline pilot was ragging on CEO Tillman? American Airlines? Somebody post those facts if you saw it please.

[AX10]

1. American CEO's are overpaid by anymeans.

[lonestarnot]

2. Well it is worsening as we speak. The CEO pension numbers are hidden

in the annual report to shareholders.

[fairfaxvadem]

3. Wall Street Journal had this the other week...

believe it or not. Well, their journalists are far better than their editorial board, so I guess it is believable. I think it was someone named Elizabeth Schultz or something close to that, who had this story. It's behind a pay wall, so I haven't been able to get it and I'm waiting for someone who has access to get me the story at work. I've been really wanting to read how they've made such a connection.

And here we've been told it's all about the greedy unions. Gee, imagine that.

[lonestarnot]

4. Well I don't know who's been talking to you, but it's been very clear to

me for years now that is wanna be talk over. Unions! BBBBWWWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAA! :rofl: What is membership count at now in U.S.? two?

[fairfaxvadem]

6. Yes, I work for one of those old dinosaurs...

And am grateful for it every single day. Considering the humane work environment I have now compared to what I've experienced in other non-union jobs, I know full well what a lot of American workers are being deprived of.

[lonestarnot]

9. UNION YES! I don't understand why American workers have let them

decline so much. Admitted corruption in some ie teamsters, clickie in others but the benefits ideally outweigh the dues payment for sure. I just hate a scab. They are right there with repukes.

[upi402]

12. right on!

people have no information, and what they do have is MISinformation. i blame the traitorous TV news media -a propaganda organ of the corporatist state.

[fairfaxvadem]

14. from what I've observed, at least in my union

And I'm sure it is the same elsewhere, unions are not really that monolithic. Much is left to the discretion of the local lodges, and the manner in which they operate varies so much, I still find it a bit baffling. In many ways, it's a much more democratic (small d) system than any corporate, top-down environment could ever claim to be. I think most Americans are as I was, unaware about how unions work exactly.

It's all very fascinating. And certainly makes for a more interesting place to work because it IS so different from working at your basic corporate outfit.

Union Yes!!

[upi402]

17. "big union PAC's" -the big lie!

Our Political Action Contributions are really just;
a single mom here
a working stiff there
-all just chipping in $20 in a desperate attempt to compete with obscenely big corporate contributions.
Al Franken is right to keep bringing up campaign finance reform.

The media talks like it's a domineering monolith fighting ma&pa businesses.:banghead:

[fairfaxvadem]

18. Wow, isn't that the truth of the matter.

Dues never go to campaign contributions. All the PAC money is all voluntary, and the percentage of the members that contribute to the PAC overall is very, very low. And the filing requirements that are expected of labor unions is unbelievable. They have far more transparency than any corporation does, as far as I can tell.

But, I do put my money where my political mouth is, and I contribute every paycheck, and I'm really glad to do it.

In our office, we realize that if there was genuine campaign finance reform and lobbyists were basically bounced out of DC, that we'd probably be out of jobs, but we also realize the greater good of that occurring would be well worth it.

[lonestarnot]

20. Lobbyists need to fucking go, but that doesn't mean it has to be at the

demise of union membership. They are not standing just for a lobby crew!

[librechik]

29. GOP don't like the power of large numbers in unions--job one is discredit

the leadership, legislate and exec-order away the rank and file.

The AFL-CIO (my union)is clearly under the thumb of management. Membership is way way down. This needs to be reversed while we still can do it. Remember, it took lots of people DYING to start up the American Way from scratch. We can't accept that in this day and age. No more.

I urge everyone to join a union if you can, start one if you can't. We need the power of people- lots of people-organized against the slave-labor existence they want to impose on our children. That's how you beat the fascist elite--overwhelm them with numbers. They know this and are doing EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to divide us. Don't let them do it.

[lonestarnot]

70. I blame education for not producing more readers.

[notadmblnd]

13. because people have become convinced that they serve

no purpose. They're just a bunch of greedy crroks connected to the mob. :sarcasm:

[HardRocker05]

68. Because unions suck, at least as they presently operate. It's no wonder

that neither managment nor labor wants to have anything to do with them. I worked for minimum or near minimum wage with no benefits and no rights for many years (in non-union jobs) so i know what that side of it is like. Now I work at a union plant, and yes the pay and benefits are much better than at non-union jobs, but i have never seen so much bureaucratic BS, absurd rules, and whiny, negative attitudes before. It is like working for the government; no one who has any intelligence, cares about doing a good job, or wants to make positive, rational changes will stay at a union operation very long. For the most part, the only ones who stay are the ones who are just working the system, or trying to ride it out until their retirement, while doing as little as possible. The average worker productivity is so low, it's no wonder that union plants are closing all over the place. If the plant i work at wasn't being paid big bucks to burn "waste fuel," there's no way we could remain profitable. I used to have a very positive opinion of unions, but not any more. If unions want to survive, they are going to have to seriously reconfigure themselves, and for the good of the American worker, i hope they do. They probably won't, though, because rigidity and resistance to change seems to be what they do best.

[B Calm]

74. Wecome to DU union buster

[upi402]

88. Welcome, please read labor history and negate tons of propaganda

Do you like weekends?
The right to stop and go piss?
Did you go to school? ..you kids?
Minimum wage causing you hardship?
Like NOT breathing deady vapors and particles?

The non union sector gets more money because union workers have stuck together and sacrificed to get a fairer share of the pie. You have the right to work for free if you choose. You are 100% free to work for as little as you like.

[B Calm]

72. Raygun and the republican party destroyed the union labor movement

[Zodiak]

48. 7% of the labor force

Used to be 25% in 1980.

I read the statistic yesterday, here on DU.

[stevedeshazer]

71. Well, I guess Mrs. D, union member for 30 years, is one.

You got something against unions? What's funny about that?

[Lasher]

58. That would be Ellen Schultz of the WSJ

I have the highest degree of respect for her work on reporting employee pension issues, going back several years. She has had a lot to say about Cash Balance Plan conversions, for example.

[antigop]

5. Here is the article

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06177/701286-28.stm

Ellen Schultz rocks!

[lonestarnot]

7. Thank you thank you thank you antigop! Yes Ellen Schultz does rock and

so do you! :yourock: (bookmarking this thread for reading later this evening after dinner.)

[antigop]

11. Ellen Schultz was interviewed on Air America yesterday

She was excellent.

[lonestarnot]

21. Damn I was so busy at work, I didn't have time to listen.

[bettyellen]

56. white rose should have it archived

[lonestarnot]

64. thanks bettyellen will check it out.

[bettyellen]

65. anytime, lst... it's an outrageous story.

loved your posts on it.
:hi:

[lonestarnot]

67. It is an outrage that totally galls my ass red!

Glad you enjoyed the posts! :hi:

[fairfaxvadem]

8. Ah-ha!! Thanks so much!!!

I am so, so grateful to you.

[Bozita]

10. WOW! ... That's a helluva piece

[DELUSIONAL]

15. Thanks -- everyone should read this

The elite pensions are adding to the bottom line -- and it costs us more for things like -- MEDICINE.

In the case of pensions for regular employees, the expense is partly or wholly offset by investment returns on money the company set aside in the pension plan when it "funded" it.

Executive pension plans are different. They're normally left unfunded. They have no assets set aside in them. That means there is no investment income to blunt the expense. The result is that obligations for executive pensions create far more expense for an employer, dollar-for-dollar, than pensions for regular workers.

A company's pension expense is something it has to subtract from its earnings each quarter. The cost of executive pensions, having no investment income to cushion it, hits the bottom line with full force.

[lonestarnot]

22. Therefore they come at the expense to retirees, the good old working stiff

's pension hit.

[lonestarnot]

24. Just like the creation of the litigious America!

"This is the pension squeeze companies aren't talking about: Even as many reduce, freeze or eliminate pensions for workers -- complaining of the costs -- their executives are building up ever-bigger pensions, causing the companies' financial obligations for them to balloon." Hope people are not falling for this one either.

[lonestarnot]

25. 8 fucking percent!

[lonestarnot]

26. "largely hidden" like everything else! BASTARDS!

[lonestarnot]

27. THIS SHOULD CATCH THE REPUKES EYES!

"As a result, the savings that companies make by curtailing pensions for regular retirees -- which have totaled billions of dollars in recent years -- can mask a rising cost of benefits for executives."

[lonestarnot]

28. Dismantling of America, one piece at a time by a class war!

"Executive pensions, even when they won't be paid till years from now, drag down earnings today. And they do so in a way that's disproportionate to their size, because they aren't funded with dedicated assets."

[lonestarnot]

30. NOW tell me this isn't legalized fucking theft!

"Compensation committees often aim for a pension that replaces 60 percent to 100 percent of a top executive's compensation. It's 20 percent to 35 percent for lower-level employees."

[lonestarnot]

31. MOTHER FUCKER YOU! We should retire him as a doorman all right!

David Dorman was chief executive of AT&T Corp. from 2002 until its merger with SBC Communications in November. He left in January. His total of five years at AT&T earned him a yearly pension of $2.1 million. That will replace 60 percent of his annual salary and bonus in his final three years.


By contrast, former AT&T accountant Ralph Colotti's $28,800 annual pension replaces 33 percent of his final pay. He was at the company for 33 years.

[lonestarnot]

32. HENRY MCKINNELL I HOPE YOU ROT IN HELL!

In percentage of pay replaced, Pfizer's chairman and CEO, Henry McKinnell, does best of all. His future $6.5 million-a-year pension will replace 100 percent of his current salary and bonus.

[lonestarnot]

33. slow the growth of older workers' pensions or halt it altogether.

FUCKING SWELL AREN'T THEY!!!!!????

[lonestarnot]

34. NORSTROMS AND DILLARDS

At Nordstrom Inc., the nearly 30,000 ordinary employees don't get pensions. But 45 executives do. Another retailer, Dillard's Inc., also provides pensions only to certain officers. Neither had any comment.

I have never stepped a foot into Norstroms, and Dillards, you will never get another red nickle from me!

[lonestarnot]

35. "other, primarily general and administrative obligations"

a footnote reference to "unfunded defined benefit pension plans." Those are executive pensions.
FUCKING SNEAKING BASTARDS!

[lonestarnot]

36. Executive pension plans are NORMALLY UNFUNDED!

no investment income to blunt the expense. The result is that obligations for executive pensions create far more expense for an employer, dollar-for-dollar, than pensions for regular workers.
ISN'T THIS JUST BULLSHIT!

[lonestarnot]

37. PFIZER YOU SUCK ASS!

"Yet the pension expense they generate is proportionately far larger -- equal to more than half as much as that from pensions for regular employees and retirees, who are much more numerous. The executive plans cover 4,200 people. The regular plans cover more than 100,000. Pfizer had no comment on this."

[lonestarnot]

38. AT & T YOU SUCK ASS!

"informally earmarked an undisclosed amount of assets for paying executive pensions in the future"

[lonestarnot]

39. "gains that result when companies cut benefits"

[lonestarnot]

40. "Cutting a benefit naturally cancels part of an employer's liability"

[lonestarnot]

41. "a canceled liability equates to a gain"

[lonestarnot]

42. IBM YOU SUCK ASS!

"IBM said it will freeze the pensions of all U.S. employees and executives... A quarter of its U.S. pension expense last year resulted from pensions for several thousand of its highest-paid people."

[lonestarnot]

43. LUCENT YOU SUCK ASS!

Your pension plans are overfunded yet you are cutting benefits! "highest-paid people, which had a liability of approximately $422 million last year. Lucent confirmed that pensions for its executives and those earning more than $210,000 in 2005 reduced net income. It declined to say by how much. A spokeswoman said Lucent follows U.S. pension accounting and disclosure rules and that if the expense for retiree medical plans were subtracted, its overall retirement benefits contributed $718 million to income"

[lonestarnot]

45. GM WE ALL KNEW YOU SUCKED ASS!

The pension plan for GM executives is another matter. Unfunded to the tune of $1.4 billion, it detracts from GM's bottom line each year.


"GM doesn't break out the figure. It said executive pensions are "a very small portion of our overall expense" but declined to give the figure."

[formercia]

66. You'll get the idea quick enough...

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06177/701286-28.stm

As workers' pensions wither, those for executives grow

Monday, June 26, 2006
By Ellen E. Schultz, The Wall Street Journal

To help explain its deep slump, General Motors Corp. often cites "legacy costs," including pensions for its giant U.S. work force.

In its latest annual report, GM wrote: "Our extensive pension and (post-employment) obligations to retirees are a competitive disadvantage for us." Early this year, GM announced it was ending pensions for 42,000 workers.

But there's a twist to the auto maker's pension situation: The pension plans for its rank-and-file U.S. workers are overstuffed with cash, containing about $9 billion more than is needed to meet their obligations for years to come.

-snip-

[otohara]

16. Moral Builder to Grossly Over Pay

the Ken Lay's of the corporate world, don't ya know?

[ladjf]

19. America, are you awake? The greedy bastards are stealing

everything from you. Doesn't anything make you mad any more?

[lonestarnot]

23. I think more and more American's are getting madder and madder every

day, but they just haven't coagulated in a critical mass, but they will, waiting and watching.

[porphyrian]

44. The fuckers fire thousands of American workers...

...to give themselves a raise. There is a class war raging, whether people choose to acknowledge it or not. Unless we stop them from being able to buy control of our government, you and I, our families, our country and our world are doomed to be nothing more than a means for their increased profit. Like a virus, they have no compassion and no qualms about destroying their host to get what they want.

[lonestarnot]

46. I want to know where they all live. LOL

[porphyrian]

49. Most of them have at least one home in Florida.

It's one of the states where the law protects your house from being taken, so everyone hides their money by building enormous mansions here.

[lonestarnot]

50. Yeah I guess homestead laws are pretty beneficial to these rat bastards

there. I am going to check AZ. Bet many are here.

[kineneb]

93. but they will find their mansions

under water, since their buddies, the Little Emperor and the Evil Dick deny that there is a climate change problem
...sweet karma to have Bernie Ebber's $9 mil. "house" in Boca Raton innundated (Hubby worked for WorldCom, until May 1, 2002 layoffs).

[lonestarnot]

47. Wooodamn whoooooo! Thanks for the nominations! This should be

front and center!

[i miss america]

51. Here's a link with lots of real life horror stories

http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/NestEggs.htm

:wow:

[lonestarnot]

52. OMG! “First class business in a second class way.”

[lonestarnot]

53. I would like to also know where the skeet shooting takes place regularly.

[lonestarnot]

54. This one is a fine howdy do!

Questions on conflicts of interest

State pension official wants details
of execs' investments

By Alistair Barr, CBS MarketWatch

[lonestarnot]

55. I got lucky I guess. I got mine out when it was on top of the world just

before it started to roll down hill. Had to fight them tooth and toenail to get my own fucking money away from them, but with some sharp teeth I managed it ok.

[rucky]

90. Good Lord!

bookmarked for reference.

[antigop]

57. Here is the link to the CBS video

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=1785780n

American workers -- HAD ENOUGH YET?????

[lonestarnot]

61. EWWWWWW YES Thanks antigop! Thank you thank you thank you.

Can you screen capture and post the pie chart? Some talented DUer can I know! Who will it be? Anybody out there?

ANTIGOP SO :yourock:

[OregonBlue]

59. Where's Paul Sarbanes? These companies should be forced to

reveal these liabilities individually so that investors can determine what is actually going on with a company's pension funds.

"These liabilities are largely hidden, because corporations don't distinguish them from overall pension obligations in their federal financial filings".

Shouldn't Sarbanes, Conrad, and Dorgan be all over this.

[lonestarnot]

62. Yes. Where are they?

[OregonBlue]

91. I sent emails to Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan asking them why

the Dems don't make an issue of this. Why haven't they introduced legislation to that effect. Conrad and Dorgan are real bulldogs about this stuff and it would play very well in their State! It's really a travesty that the ordinary citizen cannot get the real picture of what these companies are doing. When they default on their pension plans, the taxpayer will end up paying for it.

[izzybeans]

60. Well if that's what the shareholders want...

it must be what the market says is "okay" :sarcasm:

[lonestarnot]

63. Me thinks it's hidden in the market

:hide:

[izzybeans]

87. A lot of things are covered up by the word "market"

most of them are legitimations for economic inequality. My favorite one lately has been the "well if the shareholders say so...then it must be okay."

[antigop]

69. DailyKOS discusses the article here....

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/23/85917/4055

[lonestarnot]

75. Yesssss! More more more!

[antigop]

77. [Hightower]:The Ungodly Pensions of CEOs

http://www.pulsetc.com/article.php?sid=2556

>>
There's even a term for the platinum pensions reserved for the corporate elite: "Top Hat" plans, they're called. But while the CEOs are feathering their own nests with multimillion-dollar annual pension payments, they're working double-time to destroy the retirement nest eggs of millions of their rank-and-file workers.

Leading this pension-busting movement is the Business Roundtable, a lobbying front made up of the CEOs of America's 400 largest and richest corporations. The Roundtable wails that its members simply can no longer be expected to pay the middle-class pensions that they negotiated – supposedly in good faith – with workers. Roundtable members say that workers must "take responsibility" for their own retirement accounts, rather than expecting the corporation to come through for them.
There's even a term for the platinum pensions reserved for the corporate elite: "Top Hat" plans, they're called. But while the CEOs are feathering their own nests with multimillion-dollar annual pension payments, they're working double-time to destroy the retirement nest eggs of millions of their rank-and-file workers.

>>

[antigop]

78. Who is pushing Social Security privatization?

From the Hightower article:

>>
The Business Roundtable is also leading of another mingy effort to downsize the "golden years" of America's working class. It has been an enthusiastic backer of George W's push to privatize our Social Security program. The top honcho of the Roundtable has grandly declared that its members will spend what it takes" to switch Social Security to private pension accounts.
>>

[lonestarnot]

81. I declare war on these NAZIs

[lonestarnot]

80. Tophats full of NAZI heads.

[lovuian]

73. Whereever money is these thieves try to steal it

What we are dealing with is THIEVES...

[lonestarnot]

76. Yes and I say that theivery on such a grand scale leads to

slave labor and eventually genocide. http://www.genocidewatch.org/8stages.htm

[Maestro]

79. And they will be allowed with the incestuous relationships

between boards and CEOs. Look at Hightower's latest blog article. http://www.jimhightower.com//node/5851

[lonestarnot]

82. Thank you Maestro!

[Maestro]

84. Any time. -nt

[lonestarnot]

83. Sweet little incestuous circle isn't it.... NCN

[Lasher]

89. This is the root cause of the overall problem.

It would not be effective to just pass a law against these pension schemes for CEOs. Senior executives and their complicit BODs would just come up with another scam to further enrich themselves at the expense of shareholders, employees, and retirees.

One thing I'd like to see is a law that prohibits a CEO from sitting on any BOD, and that especially includes his or her employer's Board. It also includes nonprofits. No exceptions. I think CEOs get paid enough so that they don't have to go taking second jobs.

This would not be a total solution, but it would be a step in the right direction.

[lonestarnot]

92. Yes. It would be a start.

[Greyhound]

85. I heard Tom Hartmann interviewing somebody last week, about

this same issue. I don't find a link to it in the archives, but it was only last week and it was a vacation show so they may not keep it, anyway the upshot was that the "pension liability shortfall" only exists because of incredibly generous executive pensions, and that there's plenty of money for the workers.

Here's a related story;
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/business/14890321.htm

[lonestarnot]

86. incredibly generous theft! Thanks for your contribution!