Quote Originally Posted by earcutter View Post
***UPDATE***

Wow Gents: just wow...

If you read today's obscure news you'll find that they were raiding the staffs pensions to keep the company solvent. That's just stealing if you ask me!

More importantly!! For the first time (for me anyway) you hear that that is exactly why the union was putting up the fight!

If that really is the case - and seemingly it is -> the Union was 100% right!!

I read the story and really began to question if more regulation is really wrong! It reeks of the United States government dipping into our social security! Hope the man never goes broke .
Can you point me to the story that says the company was taking money from the pension funds? That's a much different thing than *not contributing to* the pension funds. If you have no money (it appears the folks backing the company here are really the ones who took the loss, the investors, and not the union workers. They were, instead, working and making a product that didn't pay for their demands, and living partially off of the venture capitalist dollars to continue to receive their checks).

I doubt any company took any dollars *out of* a private pension fund, and it is very unlikely that any of the employees bear any risk of not receiving the benefits they accrued.

If the individuals were in a multiemployer type pension, it is more likely that the funds negotiated with the companies to have a reduced or no contribution into the pension fund at the time, because the company wasn't making any money and didn't have it. To spring that back on the employer while outside funding is already paying the way for the employees is disingenuous.

In short, if you can't make enough money to make contributions to a pension plan, why would you expect someone else to pull money out of their pocket to do it for you? I haven't yet seen any suggestion that the company was doing anything other than losing money.

It's too bad they dragged down the teamsters along the way. Everything I've seen from the teamsters shows pretty good business judgement and realistic cooperation and they deserved better than to be dragged down by the bakers.

So get back to why again the bakers were putting up a fight? They were making demands in a company that was already losing money instead of deciding to work with management and figure out why they were losing money and what they'd have to do to *have* the money to make a pension contribution. Again, it appears they were working a subsidized job at the expense of private investors. They aren't the victims here.