After many years of watching the company go down the toilet I would like to see a buyout. General Motors at one time offered 150K to walk away and forego pension and benefits. Any chance GE offers something similar? Would love to get away from this soul killing job. I doubt the pension will be there anyway by the time I retire.
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@1xwb please go talk to someone. It's not worth it. There are people who care about you more than money.
I'm a 30-year GE employee. My pension is accumulated at $3,200 a month if I quit today and started receiving at age 60. A financial benefits advisor calculated that it would take a $780,000 annuity to replicate the benefits that I will receive at 60 years of age with survivor benefits. So everybody's pension has a different value. It all depends on years of service and lifetime earnings.
If GM offered you $150k it was a “special circumstance offer” because it was never offered as an across-the-board buyout. There may have been a small group to whom it was offered, and in a very short time-window. I worked in GM corporate and was involved in the downsizing of GM up until just a few months before they filed for bankruptcy.
The guy that mentioned that the buyout from GM was never offered in the US is incorrect. I took the 150k buyout in 2006. I took a full year off of work to finish my degree and was hired by GE a day after I graduated. Hopefully the same does not happen to GE.
BTW, the GM plant I was working at closed a year after I took the buyout. Many people who did not take the initial buyout were offered a much lower buyout when the plant closing was announced.
I would probably take it, and I have a vested 13 year tenure. I don't trust that the pension will even be there when I retire. I'm even looking at the prospect of collecting on my >$1 million GE A+ Group Universal Life insurance at this point, to be brutally honest, if you know what I mean...
You'd be dumb to take it UNLESS you don't have much in it or think it could go the way of Enron and disappear.
I should have taken the $30k buy out when the failure of a battery plant went down. I see the same exact chaos going on in 273 Schenectady NY that I saw. Just moments leading up to the closing of the battery plant. GE is not a career it is just a job. No pension, cut the legacy rate down, no raises, healthcare going up with higher deductibles and premiums. So yes I would take a $50k to walk to another JOB and get the same stuff and probably get treated better by management at a new JOB.
I would take $50k to walk and probably most competitive wage guys would too in upstate ny
I think they are only offering $35-$45K for buyouts.
I would take a buyout of 150k. Put the money in 401k for next 15 to 20 years and watch it grow (none in GE stock)
Great post @QgBwNO9-zse. This kind of info i hope to get from this site.
Pension freeze is probably going to happen for all. I don't think they will buyout anytime soon since that would crush cash flow. If they ever offer a buyout i would not take it unless you run the amount by a finance advisor.
GM never offered that in the US, maybe in Europe. What they did (I was there for it) was to offer 1 year’s pay & benefits + job finding assistance as a voluntary job elimination program. Later they froze all pensions and offered to buy out the pensions, based on actuarial calculations.
No way I’d give up my GE pension at 65 for $150k today.
It’s not going to be there anyway. They are borrowing 6 Billion dollars but that’s only what is needed through 2020. It gets worse from there.
150k is nothing compared to the value of a vested pension. GE switched to 401k almoat 7 years ago. Anyone with a pension would be dumb to take an offer like that.
Leave my pension alone.