On New Year’s Eve, current and retired employees of Augsburg Fortress, the publishing arm of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, learned that their traditional defined benefit pension plan would be terminated and that they could lose a substantial portion of their benefits as a result of the termination. (more…)
Labor Day marks the 35th anniversary of a law hailed by its principal sponsor Senator Jacob Javits as “the greatest development in the life of the American worker since Social Security.” Thanks to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, millions of retirees are receiving the secure lifetime pensions that are making it possible for them to live comfortably in retirement. (more…)
When writer-comedian Al Franken was sworn in as Minnesota’s junior Senator on July 7, I was intrigued to hear that he will be serving on the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (also known as the Senate HELP Committee). Not surprisingly, this is one of the committees that we deal with the most, and I wondered what kind of positions Senator Franken would take on retirement income issues. (more…)
The recent bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors have caused a lot of workers to be concerned about their pensions. While Chrysler has now emerged from bankruptcy GM is still going through the bankruptcy process and the question. “What will happen to my pension?” is very much on the minds of workers and retirees in the automotive sector - and elsewhere. (more…)
Today, May 1, marks the start of Older Americans Month. What better a day to discuss the retirement security of older Americans? Not so long ago retirement security was thought of as a three-legged stool, consisting of employer-sponsored pensions, personal savings and Social Security.  (more…)
With Mother’s Day approaching, it seems only fitting that I put in a plug for the current edition of Mother Jones magazine. Its cover asks, “Who Ran Away With Your 401(k)?” and the issue is required reading for anyone interested in the future of retirement income.  (more…)
Are you a retiree from the auto industry? The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the federal agency that guarantees pensions, has provided helpful information for retirees of Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, and other car companies. Â
The PBGC guarantees pension benefits up to a certain limit for retirees of companies that have gone bankrupt and are unable to fulfill their pension obligations. Unfortunately for some retirees, the PBGC maximum guarantees may be less than what their pension is worth. For more information on how the PBGC protects defined benefit pensions, read our fact sheet.
These days, it’s not often that we agree with the decisions companies make when it comes to pensions (take a look at our lists of companies that have frozen their pensions or that have cut their 401(k) matches), but an activist alerted us to one company that is actually doing the right thing. As reported in the Times of Northwest Indiana last week, steel giant ArcelorMittal is forgiving $960,000 in pension overpayments made to 79 widows of retired workers. Many of these women are in their 80s and 90s and have relied on their survivor’s pension for decades. Having to pay back years of overpayments would have been a severe hardship for them. (more…)
With tax day approaching, Andrea Coombes of MarketWatch.com has written a helpful column about the Making Work Pay credit, a 2009 tax credit given to all working Americans with earnings under a certain amount. To implement this credit, the I.R.S. has issued new tax withholding tables. However, as she notes, implementing the tax credit through withholding tables are a  ”blunt instrument”, resulting in some workers having too much taken out of their paychecks or having too little withheld. (more…)
In the current economic climate, few of us want to open our 401(k) statements. As we’ve written in the past, the faltering stock market, combined with employers eliminating their 401(k) matching contributions, has made retirement security quite a gamble. But if you are one of the brave, a new tool can help you find out how your 401(k) measures up to 401(k) plans at other companies. (more…)
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