Traditional Pensions are UGG Boots Heist
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. 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.
Why do profitable companies freeze their pension plans or close them to new workers? The retirement crisis was not an accident. The retirement crisis was caused by actions of the companies. They had incredibly overfunded plans and chose to cut benefits and ultimately freeze the plans, even though there was plenty of money in them to pay the benefits. Initially people didn’t understand that the benefits were being cut because companies hid it.
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.
Do companies need to cut retirement benefits to stay competitive? When companies began cutting benefits it wasn’t to remain competitive because the plans had a huge surplus and there was no cost to the company. What they were doing is taking the plan and finding a way to convert some of the assets into a benefit for the company and also to boost their profits. It’s not accurate for them to say they had to do this to remain competitive.
How is pension plan accounting used to boost shareholder value? Cutting the benefits actually gives companies a boost to profits. It’s an accounting effect. If you promise to pay $100 million to retirees, that’s a debt on the books. If you cancel that debt, then you get to keep the profit. Freezing the plan not only let them keep the money in the plan, but gave them a boost to profits.
