Who else has figured out that the new plan they offered back in 2004 was the worst decision an employee could have made?
I wonder who did benefit from that "new plan", because certainly not the employees that where tricked and lead to believe it was similar to the old plan, if not better.
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The change in benefits also affected current employees. They presented an "old plan" and a "new plan," complete with large, visually appealing slides and graphs tailored to each employee, highlighting the long-term pension differences.
However, there was a significant issue: the charts were incorrect!
For instance, there was a chart showing that at retirement age the two would align and be the same. All instances of changes in hours, pay, position etc, remained the same or were better towards the calculations. The old plan would have been $x-x a month, but the "new plan" turned out to be just $x-x a month, every month for the remainder of life. $5,000 less than it should have been.
The company later apologized for the error. I mean, they said "oops, my bad" in so many words and did an adjustment, which in my opinion, was insulting. Seems that the funds were not managed. Zero interest earned since inception? I wonder if any of the Mars family experienced zero or negative interest on their investments? I highly doubt it.
I quitted Mars !
I worked at Mars as a maintenance person around 2002. To give a bit of history for those who are not familiar with the company, please bear with me. The information I got mostly from my research and from Mars long term employees ...aka..'old timers' .
I was hired (w/ a bunch of others) one week after the company reduced the pay, the pension, health care coverage...aka..cost reductions. Conveniently, we did not know until we talk to the old timers, we do same jobs with more responsibilities and much lower pays/benefits. Their pay/benefits were among the best in manufacturing sectors at the time, before the cuts.
The company is always private and ran by 2 Mars brothers, after they decided to hand the business over, the later generations decided to change the name briefly to "Master foods" and a CEO to run it. The 'slash and burn' mentality was running wild....
Fast forward, I quitted Mars after a year and half, went to Kelloggs and work at a cereal plant. The pay and benefits are very good, compatible to Mars in many ways (before the cuts..of course). Kelloggs also bough Keeblers for 3.87 billions in 2001, and sold it in 2019 for 1.3 billions...very... "smart move"!!!
Then the strike from the cereal plants in October 2021. The results are a mediocre contract renewal, basically the company grand father the current (legacy) workers, and the new hires after the new contract date will belong to a new lower tier in term of pay, benefits...
There are 2 tiers of workers, doing same jobs, one with much lower pay/benefits. The results are bad attitudes and work performances, the newer hires have to work their way up to be a legacy employee only when one of the upper tier employee retires or quit, that create an opening for the lower tier to fill, if they stay there and wait that long for the chance.
Then... Kelloggs CEO and Mars CEO(?) were having breakfast one day, they decide to explore the merger. Kelloggs cereal plants became WK Kellogg, and the rest of the company become Kellanova. The Kellogg CEO then took the money and ran off to start a new adventure.....
The moral of the story is, I saw the cuts at Mars, and at Kelloggs, very similar, the founders of Mars and Kelloggs appreciated their workers for the company successes by giving them generous pay/benefits/pension....The newer generations of American businesses have different mentalities and their business decisions often don't take their workers welfare into consideration, they mainly take care of themselves and the bosses for Wall Street, and the share holders (which the upper management people have millions in pay/benefits/stock options...they are among the major share holders)
Buckle up people, it may be a bumpy ride ahead, I can only wish I am totally ignorance and wrong about this, but the writings are on the wall. Hope those who are working for these companies will be treated with dignities, after all, without the workers the companies will not make any money or profits.