Originally Posted by
DR K
I hope the company doesn’t realize that all it takes is a little “intransigence” to scare us away from pension improvements. If they apply that intransigence to other areas of negotiations we may never get a pay raise again.
As for PBGC/ERISA issues, I would be surprised if our stabilized plan would be covered, and if it is our insurance premiums would be very high. Our notional shares are invested in instruments that are advertised to mimic stock market returns. How do you get that with any asset mix other than stocks? PBGC/ERISA requires risk analysis to match retiree liabilities with funding requirements. If we are heavy duty stocks in the plan, there’s no way they would insure that without gobs of cash in reserve in the trust Because of the risk. Dividends on stocks would not pay nearly enough for yearly retiree income requirements, so do the equities that make up our notional investments have to be liquidated to pay us in retirement? If so this thing is a mess and a lawsuit waiting to happen. If there is more to it, it would be nice to see because the secret pancake investment mix has not been disclosed to my knowledge.
The idea of a self funding pension based on stocks is straight snake oil and we will be the laughing stock of the industry if we give away our A fund for this garbage.
We need negotiators fighting for improvements on our existing A plan and coordinating that fight with the membership, not day traders who think the stock market can save us from a fight while telling us we’re not smart enough to understand how great this magic plan is or how smart they are.
per the ALPA “education material” I have seen and company disclosures:
1.) The new plan is covered by the PBGC and is ERISA compliant. Its already been approved and is being used by others currently.
2.) Our new plan would be invested like our current plan and our current plan (per companies last earnings call) has done very well over its life with returns. Take a look at the transcripts. They even threw out a number for how well it had done this past year. This is the reason they stated they do not anticipate and further funding needed for the next 2 years. With these gains we got nothing as the ALPA education material stated. The money is in a trust. These trust are not invested in “stocks” and therefore are not “snake oil”.
Lets deal in facts in this debate otherwise its all conjecture. Im just using company data and data from ALPA education material.
Once again, I think I’m like many of our pilots, im open to all ideas but, if we throw around inaccurate information we cant even have an educated debate.