"Here’s your check, go away.’

[SoCalDem]

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-27/u-dot-s-dot-automakers-cut-retirees-loose#r=elsewhere-img


Patricia Roberts, GM retiree, age 63

U.S. Automakers Cut Retirees Loose
By Keith Naughton on June 27, 2012
snip

GM is offering buyouts to 42,000 pensioners, or about 36 percent of its salaried retirees, who left from Oct. 1, 1997, to Dec. 1, 2011. Those who refuse the lump-sum buyouts will find their pension plan shifted to a unit of Prudential Financial (PRU) along with those of other retired U.S. salaried workers. GM will spend $3.5 billion to $4.5 billion to create a group annuity at Prudential and to offer the buyouts. The moves will excise its 118,000 salaried retirees from its books, though the company will continue to cover the pensions of about 400,000 hourly retirees. GM says the lump-sum payments and annuity will together cut $26 billion from its pension load.

“The market is willing to give a very positive reaction to pension-risk reduction,” says Mick Moloney, a partner in the insurance practice of consultant Oliver Wyman, which advised GM on its plan. “As soon as the press release came out, the share price went up,” he says. Some retirees, though, feel betrayed. “GM is simply abdicating its promise to salaried retirees for a lifetime pension to balance the books by unloading the obligation,” Jim Shepherd, president of the GM Retirees Association, said in a June 21 letter to a GM executive. “They’re throwing everybody under the bus,” says Vern Henderson, 79, a 1987 GM retiree not offered the buyout. “They’re targeting people who are the biggest liability to General Motors because they’ll live longer.” (GM says it will still offer retirees life-insurance benefits, discounts on cars, and regular updates on its business plans.)

snip

[Prometheus Bound]

1. I'd definitely take the half million and go away.

I wouldn't want to depend on GM surviving for the next 20-30 years.

[SoCalDem]

2. The taxation on that lump sum would surely eat into it,and

if the pension medical insurance goes as well, one serious illness could wipe it all out, especially if it happened before all the wrinkles get ironed out in the ACA..

This is vindictiveness at its apex.


People who worked a whole lifetime, forgoing raises for decades in exchange for that enhanced pension they were promised, and expected.

The employees were NOT in charge of keeping those pension plans solvent...they only knew that they were taking home less pay each week, so that their future would have security..

It's like cheering a marathon runner along all the way of the race, than then shooting them in the knees at mile 25.5.....and then berating them for not planning better.

[GeorgeGist]

3. Profits are expendable, people are not.

Vote for One.

[HiPointDem]

4. the boomers are getting jacked every which way. had to pay higher fica during all of their

working lives (over the cost of providing ss for their elders) and now social security is threatened; came into the workforce just as defined benefit pensions were being phased out & had to go through several crashes with their lousy 401ks -- & now even those who had defined benefit pensions are getting jacked.

all these savings/retirement plans seem to just be ways for the ruling class to concentate large funds to steal.

[annabanana]

5. fuck those bastards

The social contract is just a distant memory