Bye-Bye, Pension!

It's just a matter of time till your company drops its defined-benefit retirement plan.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Friday, Jan. 27, 2006, at 4:17 PM ET

Until recently, the cram-down—the process in which a company walks away from pension and benefit promises—had generally been confined to failed companies like Delphi. Struggling companies frequently terminate their pension plans and push the liabilities onto the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

But now perfectly healthy companies—solvent, profitable, thriving, industry-leading, blue chip companies—are unilaterally moving to slash the expected compensation of nonunionized employees by "freezing" pension plans. They're doing so not because they have to, but because they want to—and because they can.