"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Mike Rapoport" wrote in message
nk.net...
Good points all! To add another: Anybody, including United employees
could see, in easily obtainable documents, that United was not funding
its pension obligations for many, many years. Any United employee who is
surprised that they aren't going to get their pension is a fool. The
handwriting has been on the wall for years, perhaps decades.

Is it every employee's responsibility to monitor pension funding? If not,
who's responsibility is it?

Just because the information is publicly available, that doesn't mean it's
the fault of someone other than the entity responsible for actually
funding the pension that it didn't get funded.

I can see good reasons for why the "victims" here aren't entirely
blameless. But put blame on them just because they weren't performing
watch-dog duties seems unreasonable.

Pete

You are right in a perfect world. In the current world you need to depend
on yourself or others that have the same interests as you do. Funding
pension liability is a cost for the employer and it is income for the
employee. It is easy to see why the company wants to minimize the
contributins and why the employee should want third-party confirmation that
the contributions are made.

In the United case, if the pensions had been fully funded, the company would
have gone bankrupt years ago.

Mike
MU-2