Originally Posted by
kronan
Originally Posted by
TonyC
Originally Posted by
kronan
Every year does count. Having a young family and choosing to work only 500 hours is a personal choice. It is a choice that has a huge impact on your family's eventual B-plan value. It is a choice that has a huge potential impact on Disability Compensation, should-God forbid-our young family go on disability. (Pretty easy to live a great life on 500 hours, not quite as much fun on 250 hours)
Again, the NC listened to those very valid concerns and added another Benefit formula to the PSPP proposal. Benefits would be the highest of Market Returns, Floor Calculation, and no worse than a value created by our current A plan formula.
Every year counts in different ways for different plan types. If all we have are two defined contribution plans, like our current "B" Plan and the proposed Variable Benefit Plan, then every Credit Hour of every year counts towards improving the retirement benefit and the "B" Plan balance.
Under our current "A" Plan, a traditional Defined Benefit Plan, every year counts as a Year of Service, and that equates to 2% of the pilot's "High Five" Final Average Earnings. Maybe it's a young family, or maybe it's an aging parent, or maybe it's a family member with a major illness that causes the pilot to pay more attention to his home life than his flying gig. Maybe it's just a desire to remain senior in a lower-paying seat to improve his quality of life. Regardless of the reason, the pilot gets to choose to work less and still get 2% Years of Service credit under our "A" Plan. Under the Variable Benefit Plan, he won't have that choice.
On multiple occasions I have said a Traditional Pension is Superior to a PSPP style Pension with the same Compensation limits. An Average is always superior to a year by year addition. It's only in comparison to our unchanged Pension Plan that a PSPP style plan is, modestly, superior to. IMO
First, a Traditional Pension, a Defined Benefit Plan, has no Compensation Limits, so I don't know how you could say "the same" when comparing it to a Variable Benefit Plan. But let's let that slide for a moment.
The comparison to our unchanged Pension Plan is the first lie we've been told, the foundational lie upon which the whole story of the PSPP has been built. It doesn't take much to improve on $130,000, so they can make the PSPP look sweet if that's the standard by which a retirement package is judged.
It's NOT. The standard by which it should be judged is 50% of our REAL Final Average Earnings. Period.
Do we agree on that point?
.