When Boeing announced that it was phasing out its pension plan for new non-union workers, company officials said they would propose the same change to Boeing’s unions. Well, they’ve done that with the largest union — the Seattle-based International Association of…

Looks like Boeing has joined the many companies who are de-emphasizing traditional pensions in favor of 401k plans. A company news release says that nonunion workers hired after Jan. 1, 2009, will join a new defined-contribution savings plan. Boeing will seed…

Much of the retirement debate has focused on shoring up Social Security, saving the traditional pension plan and getting more workers to open Individual Retirement Accounts.  Those all are important discussions, but both a new book and a McKinsey study point…

Forbes has a provocative piece on the movement to pull public pension money out of companies that do business with Iran. Trouble is, one of its key examples appears to be wrong.

Forbes leads with a discussion of StatoilHydro, a…

Illinois is estimating its liability for retiree health care at $24 billion, the Bond Buyer reports. All states have to include such liabilities in their financial statements this year under a new accounting rule.

The number is much lower than the…

In just three months, big companies’ pension plans have gone from collectively overfunded to slightly underfunded. So says a new study by Mercer Human Resource Consulting,  which looked at plans for 1,500 large companies.

The pensions’ funded status fell by…

The Employee Retirement System of Texas, responding to pressure from the governor and state legislators, has adopted a policy on socially motivated divestiture requests. But it appears that the policy doesn’t actually require the pension fund to sell anything. The…

Pay and benefits gains for government workers are far outpacing those in the private sector, according to a USA Today analysis. It’s largely because pensions and retiree medical coverage, which are endangered species at private companies, remain gold-plated benefits in the public sector. The…

Chicago has appointed a commission to address pension problems that dwarf those in St. Louis. According to the Sun-Times, Chicago faces $10 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, and that’s without counting obligations for retiree healthcare.

Chicago’s new commission is supposed to…

State governments have promised $2.73 trillion worth of retirement benefits to their employees, according to a new study by the Pew Charitable Trusts.   They have set aside about $2 trillion to cover those benefits, leaving a funding gap of $731…