by Fran Hawthorne
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Product Description
Pension plans in America no longer represent commitments that financially troubled companies will honor. Neither bankruptcy courts, nor Washington, nor unions have the clout to make them do so. The disposition of these plans is instead left to serve the needs of big investors. Often these investors are a company's best hope of restructuring after bankruptcy. Investors want a lean investment unburdened with financial promises to employees no longer on the payroll. Despite laws passed to discourage the termination of plans, the courts allow it, caving in to the forces garnered to reinvigorate a failing company. Unions are often compelled to choose between the financial welfare of retirees and jobs for active workers.
This book explains in shocking detail how terminating the pension plan became a knee-jerk strategy for bankrupt companies that hope to attract big investors to help them reorganize.
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Average Customer Review:
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Why companies dump pension plans and how they get away with it., 2008-09-04
Companies of various sorts have been breaking their promises to employees, firing them just before they vest, and cheating them out of pensions for about a century. My mother was one of them. Congress created the ERISA as a legal framework to protect pensions and the PBGC as an entity to be a watchdog on the way companies administer their defined benefit programs. Unfortunately, companies have found ways through the intentions of these laws to still dump their pension programs onto taxpayers (and other firms in their industry who remain "viable".
Fran Hawthorne first wrote about this issue in the early 1980s and recent events inspired her to return to it and write this helpful and informative book. If you are part of a defined benefit program, a business person who wonders about the ramifications of defined benefit versus defined contribution, or a member of the public just interested in this subject, I think this book would be quite interesting and helpful to you. She explains why and how investors, management, unions, and bankruptcy courts put so little emphasis on helping retirees over present workers. The basic idea is that keeping the company running in some form is usually better than closing it down. Even if it means hurting a lot of people who have worked a lifetime for the rewards promised to them.
Good book.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI
1 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
Pensions!, 2008-05-02
This is a great book! You need to read it whether you're already retired, thinking about retirement, or retiring in the far future. Lots of important info for all.
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