Posted on 07/26/2005 12:00:33 PM PDT by summer
Pension? What's that... pension? Bwahahahahah! Pension... and then, there are the rest of the people, who deal with it on their own!
Where I worked at Lockheed Martin, they have bene gradually reducing pension benefits, but they have not been able to do away with them entirely, because there is still a hesitation on the part of engineers to try to find employment elsewhere. (They have a good 401K plan too.) I also worked as a teacher when younger, but when I lost that job I took the pension funds and foolishly spent them.
Of course now I am on this pension, and medical costs are eating away nearly 50% of it, (that is how they limit the pension, they put a cap on medical insurance.) If the company goes belly up, I and many like me will see the pension go away. fortunately, the pension is only a fraction of my retirement planning. Most was savings on my part into the 401K, and conservative investments rather than play the market when I neared retirement.
most of these large companies had a pension AND a 401K. eliminating the pension for younger workers, and converting workers already in the system to cash balance (which reduces the benefit 40%) is a direct savings - they aren't swapping any new $$$s towards you in another form, its a direct take back.
increasing salaries? what world are you living in, their new "talent" is in India and China. there isn't going to be any increasing salaries to hold onto US "talent" - they are laying them all off in wave after wave, most too small to make the news, but its happening.
I don't know but I thoought the gov't had passed some kind of law that protected people with company run pension plans.
the reason those Lockheed engineers are not trying to find employment elsewhere - there isn't any, even with the reduction in compensation, where are they going to go to find anything comparable?
Are you suggesting that Indians and Chinese are more talented and valuable to the company than us?
That's the key. I have had my own (wife also) IRA since they became available and have funded them to the maximum allowed every year.
The magic of compounding, how sweet it is!
Yes, because they're also cheaper.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=ao.Zi7o8n_Jc&refer=top_world_news
they want to stop them from dumping them on the government. the protections for workers who were converted (read: wiped out) mid-career to cash balance, still is not there.
given what they earn - YES. if they weren't, offshoring would be dying instead of ramping up.
Actually you missed the point, Lockheed "attracted" these workers by continuing the pension program even when other companies are dropping theirs. Lockheed is hiring and getting new people as we speak. Their main problem is that once they train new high tech people they find that Lockheed's rate of salary increases is "sloggy" so they leave for faster paying companies. If these young engineers with FPGA and VHDL skills can get new jobs easily I suspect there are jobs to be had.
From my perspective Lockheed engineers stay because they don't keep up their skills and Lockheed does not put severe strains on their workload (unless there is a crisis or a failure, then cancel all shore leave.)
The Governator wanted defined contribution for California. Muahahahaha. It WILL come.
the only thing keeping this group of engineers afloat is that they work for defense contractors, and the security clearances won't allow offshoring or employment of foreign nationals.
There was a plan for a while to "cash out" the pension plan when Martin acquired Lockheed. Lockheed had a "fully funded " pension plan and Martin was "underfunded". The Lockheed approach was to give the funds to the people who paid in. It was so much money that people like me, in my 50's then would have taken the money and left. At any rate the Martin side won and the pension funds were comingled. This started me thinking about what I needed to retire, and about five years later I went out the door.
Maybe I am naive, but in the competition of the free market, the U.S. has always won...and I believe that they will continue to win. True...layoffs are always in the news, but hirings never are. Some professions become extinct only to open up opportunity for the birth of new ones. Just becuause other countries are improving dramatically, doesn't mean there must be a corresponding lowering of our standards of living. That "zero-sum" mentality seems more of a socialistic idea I would read about on DU. Japan assumed the role of electronics emporors. Our standard of living continued to increase the whole time. I can't think of a single instance when free market has been bad on a macroeconomic scale. What we need to be doing is concentrating on leveling the playing field, not taking our ball and going home.
Thank you for the link.
Dear DennisR,
Someone who invests conservatively 12% of his income over a period of a working career (40+ years) will have a more generous retirement than most folks with defined benefit pensions.
Being able to save the money entirely tax-deferred makes it that much more attractive. Having the employer pay a third of the contribution is even nicer.
sitetest
Company supplied pensions are an archaism from the prosperity times of ~'46 - mid 70s, when the U.S. had large, almost monopolistic, economic power...
This idea of retiring and living better is purely a recent idea...
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