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Traditional Pensions are Casualties of a Retirement Heist
Tweet Share on Facebook September 15, 2011 Comment (4)Companies often say they are freezing their traditional pension plans and eliminating retiree medical benefits to remain competitive with pension-less employers overseas and cope with an aging workforce and stock market losses. But in a shocking new book, Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers, Wall Street Journal reporter Ellen Schultz explains that pension cuts are actually an accounting maneuver that is being used to boost corporate earnings. The massive retirement liabilities that many companies report are actually caused by unfunded executive pensions and deferred compensation plans, not the pension obligations to ordinary employees, she found. U.S. News asked Schultz to explain why traditional pension plans are really being frozen. Excerpts:
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9 Workplace Benefits That Need Improvement
Tweet Share on Facebook September 9, 2011 Comment (2)Many workers feel fortunate to have a job at a time when the unemployment rate is over 9 percent. But a growing proportion of employed workers say that their current job doesn’t provide adequate pay or benefits. Employee job satisfaction has dropped to 83 percent, compared to 90 percent before the recession, according to a recent Gallup poll of 489 employed adults age 18 and older. Considerably more workers are now unhappy with their health insurance, retirement plan, and the amount of money they earn than three years ago. Here are the workplace benefits that workers are growing increasingly dissatisfied with.
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Industries with the Best 401(k) Matches
Tweet Share on Facebook September 6, 2011 Comment (1)Workers in the private sector were offered a median 401(k) match of 3 percent of pay in 2010. But the maximum possible employer contribution is considerably higher for specific groups of workers. Here’s a look at which employees are getting the biggest company contributions to their 401(k) plan.
