Until now, dopey yours truly forgot to remind you about the U.S. District Court lawsuit in Denver, which I wrote about this spring. I've e-mailed one of the lawyers representing three KUSA-TV employees in Denver, who filed the original complaint about four years ago. I asked the attorney at Denver law firm Hill & Robbins whether the freeze had any impact on the suit. I'll let you know more, if I hear more.I'm now embarrassed that I didn't write more about the likelihood Gannett would some day freeze the retirement plan. I'd been expecting that for years, and stupidly figured you, too, knew the plan's days were numbered. But based on the dozens of comments you've written here, I now stand corrected.
Department of Better Late Than Never
Some helpful links, courtesy of an eagle-eyed Gannett Blog reader:
- Protect yourself from pension freezes. This 2005 column by USA Today's Sandy Block (hi, Sandy!) offers a helpful primer.
- A Q&A about freezes. It's by the non-profit Pension Rights Center, which bills itself as the nation's only consumer group dedicated to "protecting and promoting the retirement security of American workers, retirees and their families."
I haven't looked into it fully yet, but does anyone know a way (without leaving the company) that we can roll these pensions into another financial instrument?
ReplyDeleteIt irks me that (as someone pointed out in another post) Gannett will somehow profit more than I from this money that will not grow for me.
"3% cost of living"? Like the government, Gannett doesn't think that food and fuel (auto and heating) are factors in that equation. We will all be losing money in the long run.
But they upped our mileage rate to $.30 a mile.
Whoo-hoo.