June 3, 2009

GM pensions - A USA Today primer

With so many retired General Motors workers in the area, I'm sure many of you are trying to figure out how the company's bankruptcy will impact your finances.
USA Today has a pretty good little primer here. The federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. has some information here as well.
If anybody who's impacted wants to talk to me or another reporter for a story, I'd love to hear from you.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

13 comments:

Bill Stortz said...

Steve,

For you, and anyone else that is interested, the book, "While America Aged", by Roger Lowenstein has a great explanation of how and why corporations and governments made ruinous pension and health care promises to American workers.

GM is one of the examples he used and he points out very clearly that there is enough blame to go around.

Great history and informative, but also a warning for the future.

Available in the local library.

Anonymous said...

Another Union success story! All they are doing is ruining this great country

Anonymous said...

Thanks to Tom Colapietro and his comrades.

Anonymous said...

thanks steve

Anonymous said...

Tom is for tom thats it. never trust him and the rest of the union. Why hasnt anybody talked about union officers running arts fund raisers. Is this a secret.

AnonymousWestconnStudent said...

Mayor Stortz,

I will definitely check out Mr. Lowenstein's book. For people who are interested in seeing more about the failure of GM from the "top down" I would encourage people to check out this article from the NY Times last December:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/06motors.html?_r=1&scp=49&sq=General%20Motors%20design%20engineering%20financial&st=cse

Anonymous said...

New Slogan: "GM the end of an Era"...just like "George Bush, then end of an error"

boring said...

8:57 - because you have worn out the subject to the point that it is just like your personality - boring, boring, boring.

Anonymous said...

Again the union ruins another company. Next bristol will fall to the unions. Hope you voters start thinking about that. why would you let the union run your fund raiser no clue just like the voters.

Concerned Constructive Conservative said...

The UAW is unquestionably the biggest reason for GM's problems.

The municipal, state and federal government already have "fallen" to the unions.

And I like the phrase/slogan "Obama; Keep the Change" or "One-Big-Ass-Mistake-America"...better.

Concerned Constructive Conservative said...

The aged-ness of the population has little to do with corporations such as GM going bankrupt. The legacy costs ,no matter what the demogrphic trends are, are unsustainable. This is even more so with the down-sizing of GM and other unionized industries such as steel.

Anonymous said...

The city is making the same mistake that GM, and the UAW, made: put off obligations to the future, on someone elses watch.

Well, we see what happened there, and now what is happening to Brsitol!

Anonymous said...

How much did the Company hacks rip off ? The biased jerks are at it again. How much are you giving back that you screwed out of the public?