Anonymous said:
For what its worth as a TPC-1er I received a letter from the Chairman of the LLNS Benefits & Investment Committee of the LLNS, LLC Board of Governors. It's dated Nov 25, 2009. I don't know if TPC-2ers also received it.
It is reproduced below in case it was not sent to all LLNL employees...
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Dear LLNS Defined Benefits Pension Plan Participant:
Many of you have asked questions regarding the health and security of your pension benefits and the potential for requiring employee contributions to the LLNL Plan in the future.
At the all-hands meeting on November 18, 2008, George Miller announced that the LLNS Plan is healthy and safe. Your pension benefit is a function of your years of service and salary. These factors provide you with a steady stream of monthly pension payments regardless of economic conditions. Your monthly pension payments (Plan liabilities) are made from assets in the LLNS Plan. Even though the financial markets have declined substantially in 2008, the LLNS Plan's assets remain considerably greater than its liabilities, and should continue to be sufficient to protect against future adverse economic conditions. Currently, the LLNS Plan's over-funded position makes it exempt from any contributions for the foreseeable future.
The LLNS Benefits & Investment Committee insures that the Plan assets are invested for the long term in a diversified portfolio among domestic and international stocks, fixed-income investments and cash. The goal of this diversified portfolio is to provide stability over the long haul to continue to pay the promised retirement pension payments to both current and future retirees.
Sincerely,
Paul E. Rosenkoetter
Chairman, Benefits & Investment Committee
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I plan to keep a copy of the letter for my lawyer in case LLNS forgets its promises.
7 comments:
Sorry I made a typo - the date of the letter is November 25, 2008, not 2009.
"the LLNS Plan is healthy and safe"
"the LLNS Plan's assets remain considerably greater than its liabilities"
Is there a document stating the beginning total assets, current total assets and liabilities, YTD returns, assets allocations, etc ?
(like in real numbers ... instead of 'warm & fuzzy' sound bites ...'
)
A memo on the Benefits page at LANL currently states that the LANS TCP1 plan is down by about 25% as of late October. I find it a bit strange that LLNS is saying that the TCP1 plan at LLNL is just hunky dory. In general, most company pensions are currently report they are down by 25 to 30% from full funding after the Fall market crash.
I strongly suggest you use the "trust, but verify" method before getting too elated. Ask for the documents and read them closely. Unfortunately, at LANL the info LANS will officially give out only covers the year 2007.
I thought that under law (ERISA) the pension fund had to officially report to employees ? Can we get a statement from Lab management when this will happen ?
You better because they've broken every promise they've ever made since the took over. With GM, Ford and Chrysler looking for a handout of which they may or may not get, bankruptcy would be the next smart move on their behalf. When that happens and their employees are handed to PBGC, the PBGC is going to be looking for funds to keep them afloat. What better place to find these funds than an over funded TCP-1 pension program by an entity who too knows all contractual agreements are null and void upon filing chapter 11. What a scam corporate America has going. What the hell, at least you'll get 1/4 of what you were entitled too. That's a lot more than most people in this country at age 65 will have.
Looks like you got your wish 12:33 AM. An email was sent out saying that the TCP1 report was released on the benefits webpage. Maybe someone from benefits is reading this blog?
However, the report was for 2007.
I hope that we don't have to wait a whole year to get the 2008 report.
The report on TPC-1 sent to the Dept of Labor was for Oct 1, 2007 to Dec 31, 2007. I bet we won't see the full CY08 report until fall of 2009.
To summarize what was in the email from LLNS.
Benefits under the LLNS Defined Benefit Pension Plan (TPC-1) are provided through a trust fund. Plan expenses were $189,367 (all administrative expenses). A total of 3,927 persons were participants in or beneficiaries of the plan at the end of the year. The value of the plan assets, after subtracting liabilities of the plan, was $1,657,376,087 as of December 31, 2007.
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