[detbuch]

Originally Posted by wdmso

I love how you hide behind Freedom your not looking for freedom.. your looking for fairness .. your looking to remove freedoms (colective bargining ) because you dont have it ..

Saying that "collective bargaining" as it is practiced here is "freedom" is like saying that a group of your associates who are less well off than you and who depend on you to foot the bill for any group activity among all of you is "free," has a "right," to demand that you negotiate with them how much of your money must be spent on said funding and under what conditions they will participate in the activity with you. You also would not have the right to collude with other well off people, who enjoy the same activity and also subsidize their group of less well off friends, in order to have a combined agreement not to cave in to any demands. And you have no "right" or freedom to not practice the activity with them nor the freedom to stop paying for it, other than to stop doing that activity all-together. And if you did stop doing it all-together, your group of friends who depended on you to fund their activity could go over to the other well off people who fund the same activities for their associated group which could grow to take up the slack produced by the departure of you, their former benefactor.

The form of "collective bargaining" you're speaking of is forced by federal law on employers. They cannot refuse to bargain with their "collective" (union) workers other than to quit the business. Nor can the employers associate with a group of other employers to oppose an industry wide demand of employees even though the latter are free to associate collectively against a single employer, even with employees of other companies which are not even in the same industry as their employer if they belong to the same collective (union).

The "freedom" of association in collective bargaining applies only to the employees and their union. The companies are not free to associate with other companies. How can it be called freedom if it is dependent on government coercion? That would be an Orwellian freedom at best.

some one looking for freedom does not reach in to others pockets ..

Whose pockets are being reached into by collective bargaining?

again who screwed the American worker companies ..

I don't know what an American worker company is. Whatever it is, and however it was screwed . . . maybe "freedeom" screwed them?

The History of the Pension
For generations, pensions were the retirement plan standard for just about every employer. This may be hard to believe, but it wasn’t until the early 1980’s that 401(k)’s even existed. Ironically, 401(k)’s were originally added to the IRS code as a way for companies to offer additional retirement benefits to high ranking executives, above and beyond their defined pensions. This didn’t last long.

Over time, most employers have made the shift from defined benefit pensions to 401(k)’s. 401(k)’s were sold as the fresh new thing, giving employees all of the power to choose their own investments. In reality, they were often times a low to modest cost savings over their defined benefit counterparts. The combination of the appeal to the American individualistic ambition and cost cutting possibilities were the perfect storm to sell 401(k)’s over their elder relative.

My limited understanding of the difference between 401k's and the "standard" pensions you mentioned is that the latter is a defined benefit guarantee. A defined monthly benefit is guaranteed on retirement and the provider (company, municipality) is at risk for providing the benefit. On the other hand, the 401k is a defined contribution plan in which a given amount of pay can be invested by the employees as he wishes, and the employee is at risk in terms of what benefits she gets at retirement. The company is relieved of the cost of providing pension payments. So the cost savings to the employer are substantial.