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Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.

C.R. Roberts is a Tacoma native. Before joining The News Tribune, he worked as a freelance writer and part-time cowhand on a cattle ranch in Northern Idaho. He writes about small business, personal finance and other business issues.

John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.

Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.

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Get the most up-to-date news, insights and analysis of Tacoma, Pierce County and South Puget Sound business.
Monday, August 11th, 2008
Posted by John Gillie @ 01:24:35 pm

Boeing doesn't raid workers' pension funds to pay extraordinary executive pension benefits, the company said today.

That statement came in reply to a request from a union representing its engineering and technical workers about whether Boeing was moving some of its executive pension liabilities to the workers' pension fund in a way some companies did in a recent Wall Street Journal article.

"We don't make the kinds of transfers described in the Wall Street Journal article," said Boeing spokesman Tim Healy.

The Journal article, referred to in the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace's request, dealt with companies that transferred extraordinary pension obligations for executives to the the companyies' pension funds for lower-paid workers in some cases without providing additional funding.

The effect of those transfers were to provide tax benefits to the companies but weakening the pension funds for other workers.

The union, which represents some 21,400 technical workers at the aerospace company, asked Boeing for more information on its pension funds.

Healy said the union already has all of that information, though it may not know who to interpret it.

Boeing wants to shift new employees to a new kind of pension plan under which the company would contribute a defined amount of money to their retirement funds, but wouldn't be responsible for delivering a specific benefit to workers at retirement.

The union opposes such a plan. The union contract with Boeing expires on Dec.1 for Washington workers. It expires on Dec. 5 for workers in Kansas.

Categories: Employment/Workplace, Aerospace, Labor, Tourism 1 comment

COMMENTS:

ARBE @ 16:40 - Monday, August 11th, 2008 Email
Unfortunately - SPEEA again sticks foot in mouth. But at the same time- Boeing doesn't advertise how much of pension ' surplus' in any given year gets put into operating earnings. The data is available in annual reports on close reading. it is not surprising that 99.9 percent of employees do nbot pay attention or go to the effort to find the data that IS avaialable for the asking, or at a nominal cost. Pension plans like that of Boeing are covered by federal regulations, and funding is a matter of public record if you know where to look or ASK the company. But for unions to NOT know such information or take the time/effort to find out is inexcuseable

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