Originally Posted By AutoPost This topic is for Discussion of: <a href="http://www.laughingplace.com/w/news/2014/04/16/walt-disney-world-makes-proposal-to-unions/" target="_blank"><b>4/16/14: Walt Disney World Makes Proposal To Unions</b></a>
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder Drop pension plans for what is really just a raise to what minimum wage is in many other places? Doesn't sound like any deal to me. Another company looking to screw the employee out of a pension. Nice.
Originally Posted By fkurucz >>The starting pay would rise from $8.03 to $10.00 an hour by July 2016<< Back in the 80's my roommate got a summer job bussing tables at the now defunct Tahitian Terrace in DL. He was stoked, first of all because he would be working at DL, but also because he was being paid TWICE minimum wage. So why could Disney afford to pay good wages back then but not now?
Originally Posted By Mickeyfan1 Sadly this isn't just Disney doing away with pension plans and medical benefits. It's happening EVERYWHERE! I feel sorry for employees of most companies today who are in their 50's and thinking about retirement. If they didn't start planning years ago the picture is pretty grim. I'm grateful I was able to get out and retire when I did!
Originally Posted By Mickeyfan1 By the way when I say get out and retire when I did, I did not retire from Disney but another company that had wonderful benefits and retirement plans however is now changing all of that. Thus my decision to retire earlier than planned to keep everything I had worked so hard for over 31 years, rather than lose almost 35% of my company paid retirement if I chose to take a lump sum, which I did.
Originally Posted By dizneed << So why could Disney afford to pay good wages back then but not now? >> Greed.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip Well, not totally. Increased life expectancies and rapidly increasing medical expenses make retirement health and pension benefits vastly more expensive than companies ever estimated when they first offered them. Now they truly are in a situaiton of what do we do... offer decent wages or honor the promises we made in the past? I'm sure it is not an easy decision for the companies either. They are either screwing retired employees or screwing new ones. SOME public pension funds are in better shape. The Minnesota State Retirement System, unlike many public systems, always required a substantial employee contribution. And when "fully funded status" fell beneath a certain amount (as with the 2008/09 market crash), employee contributions were increased. Of course Union Contracts would frequently keep that from being possible The MSRS system is now back to 87.8% of being "fully funded"... having sufficient reserves to pay ALL future benefits based on current reserves. A pretty unusual position for public pension funds. So I figure I'm OK until I croak. But I see the true dilemma faced by many public companies... having to try to maintain promises made while never really having the ability to increase employee contributions to the plan.
