Agreed, this is an eye opener. Very good read and there are some definate similarities between what the company's (who have greatly benefitted from these retirement plan 'modernizations') advisers/actuaries maintain and what we are hearing from the MEC advocates of this VB deal.

The cruel twist is, the VB advocates are our guys...and the lack of willingness on thier part to be completely open about the numbers, especially the evasive floor concept, is bordering on dishonesty. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they just don't have any idea yet and don't want to admit that...

They are Not being evasive, there are no details because there are NO details...all it is right now is a concept versus a goal.

Far as I can tell, mgt is still evaluating the concept.

What other improvement concepts to our total retirement are they evaluating?

None!

Somebody needs to ask them that, and why, at the next hub turn meeting.

They have chosen a specific path and they are trying to convince us it is the correct one. They should be educating us about why we can’t persue improvements to our current A Plan.

...or researching ways to improve it.

There are many ideas out there that don’t involve freezing & then restarting with a variable model.

Admittedly, I don’t believe the company will agree to reindex the cap to 1999 equivalent rates or the current full IRS cap; however; I do believe they’d be open to tweeks in the cap that could be indexed to other pay metrics, and extended YOS multipliers

Combining such tweeks with B fund improvements can avoid almost all of the negative aspects associated with the “freeze DB / restart with VB” course we seemed to be locked into

Doesn’t our radar have a wider beam width?

I am of the opinion that improvements to the A Plan are too expensive just like ALPA said during the last negotiations. I think money spent to improve it would be better spent elsewhere. I could be wrong, I could be right. We have the data, share it.

Spot on!

Full transparency on so much of the retirement data should be the first step in any honest educational process.

Most ppl are not proposing a bump in A-plan. Most are saying go with a maxed out B-plan with cash over cap. It’s a know quantity and not some new fangled bull****. Why do some one off retirement plan. Seems stupid...no is stupid.

Yep. Company wants to kill it because it is expensive. Why would they improve it UNLESS we give them something that will save them an equal amount of money. What are you willing to give up?