DuPont to cut pension contributions by two-thirds

[Omaha Steve]

FULL story: http://money.excite.com/ht/nw/bus/20060828/hle_bus-wen4349.html



uPont to cut pension contributions by two-thirds

Monday August 28, 11:22 AM EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - DuPont Co. (DD) on Monday said it will sharply cut its pension plan for U.S. employees, reducing the amount it will contribute to workers' pensions after 2007 by two-thirds.

The company said it will enhance its savings and investment plan for employees, making a contribution of 3 percent of each employee's pay beginning in January 2008 and matching the first 6 percent of employees who contribute to the plan.

DuPont is among the first major U.S. companies to cut pensions after President George W. Bush signed into law new rules meant to overhaul the country's pension system earlier this month. The move also follows an August ruling by a U.S. court that found that IBM (IBM) did not discriminate against older workers when it shifted to a new pension plan.

DuPont said its defined benefit pension program for current employees will continue, but after 2007 the pension calculation will be reduced to one-third of its current level. It said that beginning in 2007, new hires will not be eligible to participate in the pension and retirement plan and will not receive a company subsidy for retiree health care or retiree life insurance.

[Nickster]

1. And so it begins......Who could have foreseen companies bailing out

on their pension obligations the minute that Dubya gave them the green light?

[SheilaT]

6. NOT so it begins, but

so it continues. The list of companies bailing out on pension plans is a long one already. And having a strong union doesn't necessarily protect the employees from this kind of thing.

[Nickster]

8. Of course it continues, my wife was affected by just such a thing, but

the pension "reform" bill being signed will be the beginning of a whole lot more companies bailing out.

[antigop]

9. See my post below -- the Senate Democrats sold us out

The Senate Democrats rolled over and went along with it.

It could have been a shining moment for the Democratic party, but NOOOO, Kennedy and the Senate Dems had to go along with it.

The Democrats should have hung together on this -- just like they did on Social Security -- and let the Republicans totally own this bill. They could have let the Republicans take the heat for the awful pension bill.

But they didn't. The Senate Dems went along with it.

George Miller put up a fight in the House and got lots of House Dems to vote against it.

But the Senate sold us out.

[Yupster]

14. Pensions are a thing of the past

Few companies still have them and more are getting rid of them every year. It's been going on for twenty years.

Soon the only workers who have pernsions will be government employees and they'll get rid of theirs eventually too.

They just don't make any sense for the business.

[Hubert Flottz]

2. All of those years the Dupont employees voted against the union

just bit them on the arse!

Most of the Dupont guys here vote GOP!

[brentspeak]

3. The Bush/GOP dream: Ha! Ha! I got mine! Every man for himself, sucker!

[havocmom]

4. When you're too tired and used up to work

and not rich enough to consume copiously, just die. <----Corporate Policy in fascist America.

Productivity is up, wages falling. Rights being destroyed and corporations not held responsible for damages to the world/humanity.

Yep, fascism. And heading for a new Dark Age Feudalism.

The middle managers are gonna be surprised when they find the ladder they hoped to climb with their help in screwing the workers gets yanked outta the pit they didn't notice they were in with the rest of us.

[sinkingfeeling]

7. Sure happened to a lot of IBM middle managers. My greatest satisfaction

after being 'down-sized' (or forced into early retirement) was in telling my manager that, "Wow, just a couple more to go and then they won't need you either!"

[Yupster]

15. This is the problem

In the old days people retired and died.

Today a person may vive 40 years after he starts getting his pension. The company has to ask itself why it is sending checks out to people who they haven't seen for 30 years.

Just doesn't make sense for the company. A defined Constribution Plan is better for the company. When the person retires, you shake their hand, transfer their 401 (k) balance into an IRA and you're done.

[antigop]

5. We can thank Ted Kennedy and the Senate Dems who sold us out

The House Democrats put up a fight on the pension bill.

Here is the House roll call:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll422.xml

The Senate Dems (led by Ted Kennedy -- chief Dem negotiator on the bill) rolled over and sold out the American worker:
Senate roll call:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00230

Boxer and Feingold were the only two Senate Dems who voted against the pos pension bill. Lieberman and Baucus didn't vote. THE REST OF THE SENATE DEMS VOTED FOR IT.

WE WERE SOLD OUT BY THE SENATE DEMOCRATS -- ALMOST ALL OF THEM.

Sorry, but it's true.

[Hubert Flottz]

10. So what do the corporate think tanks want to do with the elderly?

If you establish and apply the principle that you can kill 'unproductive' fellow human beings then woe betide us all when we become old and frail! If one is allowed to kill the unproductive people then woe betide the invalids who have used up, sacrificed and lost their health and strength in the productive process. If one is allowed forcibly to remove one's unproductive fellow human beings then woe betide loyal soldiers who return to the homeland seriously disabled, as cripples, as invalids.
This is an excerpt of the sermon by Catholic Cardinal Clemens von Galen, delivered on Sunday, August 3, 1941, in Münster Cathedral, in which he risked his life by openly condemning the Nazi euthanasia program.

snip...

If it is once accepted that people have the right to kill 'unproductive' fellow humans--and even if initially it only affects the poor defenseless mentally ill--then as a matter of principle murder is permitted for all unproductive people, in other words for the incurably sick, the people who have become invalids through labor and war, for us all when we become old, frail and therefore unproductive.

Then, it is only necessary for some secret edict to order that the method developed for the mentally ill should be extended to other 'unproductive' people, that it should be applied to those suffering from incurable lung disease, to the elderly who are frail or invalids, to the severely disabled soldiers. Then none of our lives will be safe any more. Some commission can put us on the list of the 'unproductive,' who in their opinion have become worthless life. And no police force will protect us and no court will investigate our murder and give the murderer the punishment he deserves.

Who will be able to trust his doctor any more?

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/sermon.htm


The T-4 Euthanasia Program

In the fall of 1939 the German government established, under the Reich Chancellery, the Euthanasie Programme under the direction of Philip Bouhler and Dr. Karl Brandt. The headquarters of the operation were at Tiergartenstrasse 4, Berlin and the code name for the program was derived from that address -- T-4.
The choice of terminology for the program is consistent with the Nazis' penchant for euphemism. Euthanasia typically means "mercy killing" and in the 1990's in the United States and other western nations, it is synonymous with "physician-assisted suicide." The kind of killing carried out through the T-4 program bears little resemblance to contemporary concepts of euthanasia.

Hitler's rise to power produced a completely new set of definitions. Guided by the over-riding principles of racial hygiene, racial purity, and national health, the Nazi regime seems fairly consitently commited to the removal of those unfit to live and produce inferior offspring. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws provided for the forced sterilization of the unfit. Not only did Hitler have in mind such "inferior races" as Jews and Gypsies, he also included unfit Aryans -- the mentally defective, severely handicapped, the incurably insane and the incurably sick.

To implement the euthanasia program, special carbon-monoxide chambers were constructed. According to Milton Meltzer: MORE

http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/euthan.html

[havocmom]

11. If cooked long enough, maybe tough old geezers are edible?

Soylant Green is just around the corner?

[nealhughes]

12. With apologies to Dean Swift: "A well fattened non-productive worker

is capable of feeding a family of four for a month."

Thank you, Dennis K.! And Bernie ... and Barbara.

[denverbill]

13. I'm positive that excludes upper management.

Even though they make more in a year than 10 employee would make in a lifetime, they are still provided with lifetime healthcare and pensions, not to mention enormous severance packages and free perks. What a joke.