{"id":129414,"date":"2019-10-07T08:55:26","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T12:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=129414"},"modified":"2019-10-07T08:55:39","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T12:55:39","slug":"the-pension-plan-collapse-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=129414","title":{"rendered":"The Pension Plan Collapse Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

GE Freezes Pension Benefits For 20,000 Employees To Lower Debt Burden<\/h1>\n

ZeroHedge.com<\/p>\n

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In what looks like a dry run of the looming pension crisis facing corporate America,\u00a0GE said on Monday that it would freeze pension plan benefits for 20,000 American employees with salaried benefits<\/strong>,\u00a0WSJ<\/a>\u00a0reports. The company also plans to freeze supplementary benefits for roughly 700 employees who became executives before 2011 in an attempt to shave as much as $8 billion off its long-term pension deficit.<\/p>\n

With GE shares down 20% since Larry Culp took over as CEO last year, the CEO who was supposed to rescue the company’s perennially-languishing share price is facing pressure to cut GE’s debt burden amid a downturn in the company’s power-equipment business,\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a>\u00a0reports.<\/p>\n

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To offset the cuts, the company is planning to pre-fund $4 billion to $5 billion of the retirement obligations it’s anticipating for 2021 and 2022 (the obligations are owed according to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or Erisa).<\/p>\n