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Retirement Heist:

Throughout the IBM Pension heist, Ellen E. Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter with the Wall Street Journal, exposed IBM's and other companies shenanigans that have cost retirees millions and millions of dollars, while enriching corporate executives.

Ms. Schultz has just published a book that every IBMer should read: Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit From the Nest Eggs of American Workers. Many IBMers are aware of the "cash balance heist" of 1999. However, IBM has been stealing money from the pension plan dating back to 1991, well before the Gerstner era.

Read more, including an excerpt that focuses on IBM's shenanigans...

An Amazon.com customer review:

A great book. Made me so mad I had to scream (November 20, 2011). Every few pages there was another revolting abuse of power that made me so mad I had to scream and put the book down for a while. The prolonged litany of mundane, banal evil where bureaucrats in big firms try to come up with small inventions that help the firm and invariably loot the pensions and jobs of normal Americans is so plainly described in this book, you know the author couldn't be making this up: this is reality at its small minded, self serving apple core. Read the most popular review for his excellent detailed description of the problems brought into stark focus by this book: what infuriated me most in this was the abusive power of CEOs who already get paid more than the rest of all Americans combined, who further distort inequality and create yet more inequity by squeezing their golden pensions into the same pools as the working poor and so rob their trusting, unsuspecting employees even of the promise of a pension in their retirement. These guys are so self centered they are sick. Sure they may be smarter and more hard working than the rest of us, but no way not a million times smarter or hard working. C'mon people: there are only 24 hours in a day and nobody has an IQ higher than 200. Their sickness may destroy this fabulous democracy. What a shame!

• Yahoo! Finance's Daily Ticker: Living Large: October’s Executive Compensation Highlights. By Daniel Gross. Excerpts: Big send-offs at IBM and Gannett, a sweetheart jet deal at Clear Channel, and a penalty for talking at Icahn Enterprises headline October's top executive compensation goodies. As she does every month, Footnoted.com editor Michelle Leder stopped by to discuss some of the choice nuggets buried in Securities and Exchange Commission filings. In the accompanying video, we delve into the specifics.

  Into the Big Blue Yonder. After a successful nine-year run at the helm of the company, IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano stepped down. But the 60-year-old executive left with some great parting gifts. IBM has known as Big Blue, but given the generosity of Palmisano's package, perhaps it should be called Big Green. The total deal, Footnoted.com reports, is worth more than $170 million, including: a $65.7 million cash payout for stock options and restricted stock units; $1.5 million for life from a retention plan; $4.9 million per year in cash for five years; and a big fat pension that was worth $29.8 million as of the end of last year.

  Selected reader comments follow:

  • Why would the American economy NOT collapse when the CEOs are stealing this much from public companies. Quite like 3rd world countries, except that here in the USA, it is not even illegal. To think that this carnage is going on amidst corporate layoffs and cut bags just exposes the indecency and ungodliness of American capitalism or is it thievery capitalism?
  • Let's see--I worked for them 32 years. I retired in 2000 and was paying $88. a month for health coverage for myself and my wife. In 2009, it was up to $1,100. a month and the coverage was much less. Now, even with Medicaid it's still costing us over $10,000. a year for less coverage. Thanks SAM for you leadership and perhaps my out of pocked medical cost savings for the company will help you in retirement!
  • They steal from the workers, raid pension plans, fire senior employees to make higher profits while stealing the Intellectual capital developed in the USA. Congress watches as they force more onto Medicare while stripping away a lifetime of health benefits and raiding the pensions using the same methods. All while paying senior executives’ major bonuses as they did SAM.
  • This is a great example of what is wrong with this country, and what is destroying it. I am not against some CEOs or anybody getting richly rewarded because they can be unique persons that steer a big ship like no one else can. But come on...170 million for the IBM CEO, just for retirement?. That doesn’t include what he has made during tenure. And the list goes on and on. The inequity that has built up in this country is sickening, and these "big boys better wake up because they are pushing the limits of what the general population will be willing to take. Things could get ugly fast, and all their greed and collection of the nation’s wealth will be meaningless when they and their families are targeted by folks with their backs to the wall with nothing to lose. In this country there is enough for everyone, why do the select few feel like they need it all.
  • Now do you see why large corporations could not afford pension plans for their employees? This is truly the winner take all sweepstakes.
  • Unbelievable package for a CEO that was unbelievably cheap to the employees of the company.
  • Bring back the 90% bracket for this kind of theft. Compensation committees are about as effective as the Congress. These same companies make sure the worker cannot move forward because they cannot afford healthcare and wage inflation. The transfer of wealth demands a revolution. Pigs get slaughtered and it is time.
  • Tell me again why we shouldn't raise taxes on the rich? Seems to me, they could take their tax money out of petty cash.
  • The royal farewell package for Palmisano that you read about here is just the culmination of what's been going on for well over a decade at IBM. It's a company that has outsourced tens of thousands of jobs in the US, eliminated pensions, cut health care benefits, and squeezed the rank-and-file with raises that don't keep up with inflation. Meanwhile, Palmisano and his senior execs have gotten filthy rich off their bloated salaries and equity packages. Wall St. has loved the story and IBM stock has been a great performer. But I find IBM's behavior repugnant and not in the best long-term interests of this country. Sadly, what was once a great company could now be the poster boy for what's wrong with corporate America today.
  • And we will not raise taxes on these people! It's hard to blame the CEOs,who would not do the same thing if there were no real downside? It,s a product of the good ol'boys club,you take care of me as a board member and when it's your turn I'll take care of you. I would bet that, in private they set around and laugh at the peons.
  • No doubt about it-all of this money will surely "trickle" down to all of the workers that allowed them to earn all that money, and these "job creators" will now get the unemployment rate down to 5%. Signed---The Republican Party

• CNN/Fortune/Money: Sam Palmisano's legacy of leadership at IBM. By Geoff Colvin. Excerpts: Really good CEOs are rare partly because they use all of their brains. Most people don't. We carry around either massive left brains -- logical, analytical, not very touchy-feely -- or, more rarely in today's world, we rely on big right brains -- imaginative, feeling, intuitive, uncomfortable with algebra. Running a giant company obviously demands both, and the best business leaders can bat from either side of the plate. That group includes IBM chief Sam Palmisano who's stepping down at year-end after nearly a decade as CEO, looking like a business Mickey Mantle. The business world's ultimate endorser, Warren Buffett, announced recently he'd bought $10.7 billion of IBM stock, saying Palmisano has "delivered bigtime." ...

  2011 Businessperson of the Year. The human side of the CEO's job is making sure those knockout results keep coming by developing tomorrow's leaders. Palmisano realized that the most valuable learning is delivered not by a teacher but by the world. "We made a decision to walk out of the classroom and make sure most of the experiences were being lived at the operational level," says Randall MacDonald, IBM's HR chief through all of Palmisano's tenure.

  Selected reader comments follow:

  • "In management the brain's two halves are the financial side and the human side. Most managers, lucky, are really good with one or the other. Palmisano was excellent with both." Oh Yea! ask the thousands of X IBMers who were shown the door and made to train there Indian replacements or ask the thousands who were close to retirement who were also shown the door. And last, ask the taxpayers who funded IBM projects and then learn that IBM offshored the jobs???? Now ask the remaining IBM employees what they think of IBM and then ask the ones who were there before Sammy Boy came along?
  • Since Sammy Boy took the helm at IBM, employee moral has nose dived! Just ask any IBMer
  • Confirmed. Employee satisfaction in IBM is probably the lowest in all IT company currently. Anti-Crisis actions which IBM did the last 3 years are just excuse to earn more money nothing more. All quality employees are looking and leaving for better. This problem is really big especially in IBM EMEA offices.
  • 50/50 are the actual consequences , yes the company market share and yearly income are biggest than ever , but the employee satisfaction is lower than ever in IBM , all qualified experts are leaving because of "anti-crisis actions" taken from IBM last 3-4 years. Employee satisfaction is near 0 except the hi-managment which is usual for all big company's This will be followed from low quality on some specific sectors and will lead to very bad results in near future. IBM must remember one thing - Satisfied Employees means stable company and growing quality something which IBM is far far away from. If the behavior against the regular employees is not changed soon IBM will follow HP, Apple, Motorola and many more which decided that the money are more important than the people which are actually making these money for them.
  • Palmisano achieved the results you quote by offshoring thousands and thousands of U.S. based jobs, lining his fat pockets in the process. And yes, morale is in the ditch across the company. Someday there will be a Harvard Business School course on how to run a good company into the ground by being a short-term profit pirate.
  • Palmisano was a driving force behind shifting US tech jobs overseas. Thus his role in creating the economic mess we are in is more significant than any US President. He did what CEOs are required to do, make money, but his methods contributed mightily to killing our golden goose.
  • He made good business moves as the article said - dumping low margin and commodity businesses, but he along with Randy D. sold the US employees down the river - very disappointing for a CEO that was raised in the old IBM culture of respect for the individual which is now dead. Worse, it wasn't necessary to shaft the loyal and talented employees in the process, and for that he should be ashamed. However, like all other insular executives, they'll never recognize the unnecessary and morally bankrupt damage he did to talented and loyal US employees - especially the older ones. Now, most staff have less than 5 years tenure - can you spell age discrimination?
  • As a consultant to IBM for more than 10 years, I've seen investment in IBM's people decline year after year. This article features some good sound bites and the optics of the corporate service corps are brilliant, but ask any top-rated IBMer who's been told "there's no money for education, and be thankful for your 1% raise" while he/she reads about the megamillion $$$ bonuses paid to the top executives, and you'll get to the heart of Sam Palmisano's legacy.

• truthOut: Corporations Pushing Bill to Take Away Overtime from Computer and Web Workers. By Adele Stan, AFL-CIO Now Blog. Excerpts: Apparently unsatisfied by the enormous profits they’ve made while average Americans suffer in a difficult economy, corporations are pushing Congress to enact a new law that would exempt a large class of workers from receiving overtime pay. And they’re receiving support from members of both parties on Capitol Hill.

  Dubbed the Computer Professionals Update Act (CPU Act), Senate bill 1747 would change the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to remove overtime protection and compensation from “almost everyone working primarily in information technology” who earns either a salary, or an hourly rate of $27.63, according to Paul E. Almeida, president of the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees (DPE). ...

  Introduced in the U.S. Senate last month by Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), the CPU Act has found a Democratic co-sponsor in Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.), who is joined by two Republican co-sponsors, Sens. Mike Enzi (Wy.) and Johnny Isakson (Ga.). In a letter to senators, DPE President Almeida said of the corporations pushing the bill:

  [T]he same companies that send work offshore and bring lower-paid workers to the U.S. on H-1B visas now want to pay U.S. workers less in the U.S.

• Glassdoor IBM reviews. Selected reviews follow:
  • IBM IT Specialist in Dubuque, IA: (Current Employee) “Barely There.” Pros: Work experience received by being involved on several accounts, some certifications paid for, benefit package, ability to work from home if necessary, training, 401K matching.

    Cons: Low morale at GDF Centers, lack of action on behalf of management when important issues are presented. The GDF I work at has experienced extremely high attrition due to people receiving much higher pay at other companies. Though some leave to go back home to their families after relocating, 3/4 of the people I know who have left did so for more money. Also, the band/pay structure makes it highly difficult to earn a decent wage after a long period of time if beginning at entry level. Raises are low and do not occur often. Work is forced upon people, rather than asking if they want the responsibility. I will stick this out until the economy picks up, then I'll likely be gone as well.

    Advice to Senior Management: When you have an opportunity to speak with those of us on the front lines, please listen. We are not "commiserating," rather, we are trying to tell you how what it will take to keep the talent here. Many of us are on teams that have seen top performers leave for higher paying jobs and it affects us all, as well as the quality of service we are able to provide. When pay is an issue, you should listen up, because after all, you get what you pay for.

  • IBM Executive Consultant in Rome (Italy): (Current Employee) “Many light too much shadows during 30 years of relation.” Pros: Relationship with colleagues, active and very rich (in terms of thinking) enterprise. Cons: Too much long management chain in the organization, low propension to invest in new business model and to take innovative areas. Advice to Senior Management: Invest in skill, award competencies
  • IBM Anonymous: (Current Employee) “Positive experience.” Pros: Good work/life balance. Salary is good. Cons: Too much off-shoring. Small team sizes in US. Advice to Senior Management: Show more value in your employees and quit worrying about cutting costs 100% of the time
  • IBM Senior Consultant: (Past Employee - 2010) “It's a great experience for a short period of time, not a long term option.” Pros: As a consultant you are given the rare opportunity to work in a variety of Fortune 500 companies and see what they do right/wrong. You will rarely be bored. Cons: Road warrior becomes less of a novelty and more of a hassle. You are given zero notice when you will be shipping out to a new engagement. Advice to Senior Management: Develop better means to keep employees with IBM for longer tenures. Especially in the services space ensure there is a method for sustaining employees.
  • IBM Sales Specialist in Atlanta, GA: (Current Employee) “Get the best salary you can walking in the door because raises are few and far between.” Pros: - Work at home. - Management rarely stands in the way of job changes. Cons: - Pay, raises, promotions, etc. - Health care costs increase greater than raises. - Only one goal--increase EPS for investors. - Little training. - Little management support for getting job done. Advice to Senior Management: Stop opening each quarter with a picture of the EPS growth. Stop telling us how much money IBM is making while giving none of it to the employee. Only company I've ever worked for where after 5 years of record profits I bring home less money.
  • IBM Analyst: (Current Employee) “An almost daily question of how much worse could it get.” Pros: IBM is a giant company with some great people and the potential to gain invaluable experience if you know where to look. It is, from what I've seen, genuinely trying to promote cultural and gender diversity as well as flexible work options for employees where appropriate, although it can be easily contradicted by individual managers.

    At a senior management (executive) level, I do understand they believe the hype of flexible work options and development options for employees, plus business growth and doing 'whatever it takes' for the client. Somewhere in the company, people are genuinely conscious of the eroding morale and skills but the efforts put in place to combat this are cursory at best, and countered by the extreme cost saving and outsourcing measures that have graduated from 'exceptional quarter end activities' to standard fare.

    Cons: Literally no incentives left for doing a good job (awards, promotions, or even a 'thank you') other than if you don't outperform your peers, you be more likely to be let go sooner.

    Employee ratings, succession planning and career paths are a total farce. Sorry to anyone at a senior level with 'good intentions' but it's simply not happening on the front line.

    Irrespective of the individual, it feels impossible to get work done, because any investment (infrastructure, travel, or additional employees) would be considered contrary to the enterprise cost cutting or outsourcing edict, regardless of how strong the business case is.

    Advice to Senior Management: Have a serious think about the long term ramifications of your actions. I have no doubt on the financial success of IBM, particularly over the past 5 years. But there is a direct and unmistakable counter effect of that growth on employee morale and skills which is going to prove extremely costly.

    Don't pretend that strategies of putting most non management, non customer facing roles into low cost countries, that keep the IBM engine running, is anything but a cost cost saving exercise when the appropriate skills, experience, or culture for the role is not even a secondary consideration.

    It's all very well to prioritize the shareholders, but the current path puts even the shareholders of tomorrow at risk.

• National Public Radio (NPR): For Retirees, Selling Pensions A Risky Bet. Excerpts: In today's tough economy, many people are doing whatever they can to make it through one more mortgage payment or survive other financial hardships that have reached their doorstep. For some retirees, that means selling their pensions for a lump-sum payment. "They don't have a lot of other avenues to go to," says Leslie Scism of the Wall Street Journal, who has reported on this trend. "For many people, it's a way to get some quick cash."

  Pensions are supposed to be protection for down the road. That's how Joe Serina thought of the pension he earned from serving 22 years in the Navy. But in 2008, his wife left him and he had to pay child support. ...

  Serina found a company that promised retirees cash right away, but they had to hand over their pension checks for years. They asked that he reroute his pension check directly to their bank, every month, he says.

  The company gave Serina $57,000 up front in exchange for his $1,400 pension check every month for eight years. That comes out to $125,000 for the company that paid him the money; the equivalent of a 23 percent interest loan. ...

  The Journal's Scism tells NPR's Sullivan that investment companies so far seem to like the idea of investing in the sale of people's pensions. "There are so many financial whiz kids out there who are always willing to try to find some way to turn some consumer product into something that an investor can make money on," Scism says. "There's just constant financial engineering on all kinds of income streams."

• Forbes op-ed: Get Off My Social Security. By Lawrence Hunter. Excerpts: Disagreement over taxes and defense spending seem to have derailed the Super Committee, for now. There is, however, a bipartisan consensus in Washington to cut the Social Security benefits of current retirees—not 10 years from now, not five years, not two years but right now—as soon as Congress can agree on what to do about taxes and the military.

  Both political parties in Congress and the White House have agreed to change the method of measuring inflation to reduce cost of living allowances (COLAs) for current Social Security recipients—it’s called the Chained Consumer Price Index (“Chained CPI”). If the Super Committee “succeeds” in making recommendations to the full Congress on how to reduce the national debt, the Chained CPI will certainly be part of the recommendations. If the Super Committee does not submit recommendations, the Chained-CPI will rear its head again early next year as Congress struggles to find “savings” to fund such items as the “doc fix” to prevent a dramatic drop in doctor reimbursement under Medicare—what Congress gives with one hand, it takes away with the other.

  That is why the conservative seniors group that I head, The Social Security Institute (SSI), plans to run this TV spot nationwide urging seniors to sign a petition demanding that current Social Security benefits and COLAs be taken off the table in all deficit discussions.

  For more than 20 years, American workers were forced to overpay their Social Security taxes to build up a surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund, which now holds more than $2.5 trillion in federal bonds. Workers and retirees were promised those surpluses would safeguard and guarantee their Social Security benefits and secure them from cuts. ...

  Congress and the president have spent the United States to the brink of bankruptcy and significant spending cuts must be made. However, there is more than adequate other extravagant and wasteful federal spending, including bailouts to insolvent banks and businesses that can be cut to lower the deficit and reduce the national debt without touching Social Security benefits for current retirees. Stop the financial bailouts. Terminate the corporate handouts. ...

  First Washington bailed out the banks and big corporations; now it wants to sell out seniors. Now the politicians want to blame Social Security for the national debt. Now the politicians want to take money out of seniors’ mouths to pay for their own uncontrollable spending addiction. Now the politicians want to renege on the promise they made 29 years ago assuring workers that if they dutifully overpaid their Social Security taxes each and every payday, that their Social Security benefits would be secure. Now the politicians want to cut Social Security benefits. They want to treat Social Security like welfare, bailouts and handouts, and they want to treat seniors like some kind of Welfare Queens. Shame on them.

• New York Times: As Layoffs Rise, Stock Buybacks Consume Cash. By Nelson D. Schwartz. Excerpts: When Pfizer cut its research budget this year and laid off 1,100 employees, it was not because the company needed to save money. In fact, the drug maker had so much cash left over, it decided to buy back an additional $5 billion worth of stock on top of the $4 billion already earmarked for repurchases in 2011 and beyond.

  The moves, announced on the same day, might seem at odds with each other, but they represent an increasingly common pattern among American corporations, which are sitting on record amounts of cash but insist that growth opportunities are hard to find.

  The result is that at a time when the nation is looking for ways to battle unemployment, big companies are creating fewer jobs, and critics say they are neglecting to lay the foundation for future growth by expanding into new businesses or building new plants. ...

  The principle behind buybacks is simple. With fewer shares in circulation, earnings per share can rise smartly even if the company’s underlying growth is lackluster. In many cases, like that of the medical device maker Zimmer Holdings, executives are able to meet goals for profit growth and earn bigger bonuses despite poor stock performance.

  “It’s clear there’s a conflict of interest,” said Charles M. Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. “Unless earnings per share are adjusted to reflect the buyback, then to base a bonus on raw earnings per share is problematic. It doesn’t purely reflect performance.” In addition, executives, who are often large shareholders, stand to benefit from even a small, short-term jump in stock prices.

• Bloomberg/Newsweek: IBM Adds $7 Billion for Buybacks to Boost Per-Share Earnings. By Sarah Frier. Excerpts: International Business Machines Corp., the biggest computer-services provider, added $7 billion to its share-buyback plan to boost per-share earnings and investor returns. The addition brings the size of the repurchase program to $12.2 billion, as IBM had $5.2 billion remaining of its previous repurchase authorization, according to a statement from the Armonk, New York-based company today. Last week, IBM said it had bought back $11.5 billion of stock this year. ...

  Chief Executive Officer Sam Palmisano is using buybacks as he targets operating earnings of at least $20 a share by 2015, up from $13.35 the company projects for this year. IBM has spent more than $100 billion on dividends and buybacks since 2003, the year Palmisano became the chairman. He has also increased earnings by steering the company toward software and services.

• Yahoo! IBM Pension and Retirement Issues message board: "Re: Towers Watson Health Care Changes Ahead Survey" by "fhawontcutit". Full excerpt: In ibmpension@yahoogroups.com, "teamb562" <teamb562> wrote: So, the message is (if you are a 2nd choicer) to burn down the FHA asap? team, The problem, as I see it, (not being privy to IBM's plans), is trying to make a decision based on what *may* or *may not* happen in the future. The further away from Medicare you are, the bigger the crapshoot, imo. Here is what we know:
  1. IBM can take away the FHA. The plan can be terminated or changed. IBM doesn't have to provide retiree medical AT ALL.
  2. Because of FAS 106 accounting, companies get an immediate boost to income when they reduce/eliminate retiree health benefits -- they even get a boost to immediate income for FUTURE benefits that are reduced/eliminated. Ellen Schultz has quite a bit of info in her book. Companies can play games with their retiree health plans to boost earnings per share.
  3. I have asked the question previously and no one has an answer: Assuming the insurance exchanges get up and running in 2014 (pending Supreme Court decision on constitutionality of the PPACA), will someone who has ACCESS to a retiree plan be able to go to the exchange and get coverage? Or will that retiree BE FORCED to get coverage through the employer plan?

     A while back I posted that Sen. Bernie Sanders was on a talk show and someone asked him the question about whether the exchanges were available to retirees that had access to an employer retiree medical plan. At the time, Sen. Sanders said it was his understanding that if you had access to an employer retiree plan, you couldn't go to the exchange for coverage. IIRC, that was before the final bill was signed.

  4. According to an article by Ellen Schultz,

     "Thanks to a little-noticed clause in a 1996 law, retiree-only health plans are exempt from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that went into effect last month."

     The PPACA put some limitations on deductibles -- but I would assume that if retiree-only health plans are exempt from the PPACA, that means that those limitations do not apply for retiree plans -- meaning that there is no limit to the deductibles or out of pocket charges for employer retiree medical plans.

  5. The move is clearly toward high-deductible plans. Wendell Potter, the ex-Cigna-VP-turned-whistleblower, has mentioned this in his book and his blog. One of the reasons he left his job was because of this move toward high-deductible plans in the industry. Wendell mentions plans with deductibles as high as $50,000. (No -- that's not a typo.) http://wendellpotter.com/2011/06/insurerss-bait-and-switch/ "In Indiana, annual family deductibles for Anthem's CoreShare Plan go as high as $50,000. Just stop for a moment for that to sink in. There are not many American families that could spend $50,000 a year out of their own pockets for care and not face bankruptcy. More than half of American families don't even earn $50,000 a year."
  6. So -- if you can't go to the exchange and are forced to get coverage from the employer retiree plan, couldn't the employer raise deductibles to $50,000 or more? And there is nowhere else you could go for coverage? (I don't know -- I'm asking.)

  Net: It's hard to make a decision when:

  1. The FHA can change or be eliminated.
  2. We don't know what will happen with the PPACA and the Supreme Court.
  3. We really haven't gotten an answer on whether the exchanges will be available to retirees, assuming the exchanges are up and running in 2014.
  4. The Republicans want to repeal the PPACA. There has been a move to raise the Medicare eligibility age to 67. Romney wants to voucherize Medicare. Everything can change depending upon the 2012 and 2014 elections.

  IMO, it's all a guessing game. You can't really "plan" for retirement when you don't know what the rules are.

  DISCLAIMER: The above is my understanding of the current situation. I am not an attorney, nor am I a financial consultant. The above is not to be considered legal, financial, or any other type of advice. If anyone has any additional info regarding the above, please post it.

• Yahoo! IBM Retiree information exchange: "Anthem - Blue View Vision" by Bart Bartholomew. Full excerpt: Apologies if this has already been discussed. I missed it, if so. I received an IBM Open Enrollment notice via snail mail that starting in 2012, IBM's vision plan choice is Anthem - Blue View Vision. It says that we will be receiving the same level of features and benefits as we had previously, but color me skeptical. Anthem is part of Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a company that does not have as stellar a record of coverage as VSP does. Anyone else have an opinion of this 'new' coverage? Any idea why IBM apparently dropped VSP, an insurer my eye doctor told me was one of the best? Yeah, yeah ... I know - money. Bart
• Yahoo! IBM Retiree information exchange: "Re: Anthem - Blue View Vision" by "ibmshaftee". Full excerpt: I did some research and am not happy. First I called my providers and told them about the change and that it was a part of Blue Cross etc. They both said they take Blue Cross so I should be OK. I called Blue View and found out that we are part of something they call "access network" and neither of my providers were in it and not many medical doctors are. Only providers around here are Sears and a couple of opticians. No doctors. I have been going to the same eye clinic for over 30 years since I prefer ophthalmologists and am not about to change. Apparently I can use the Eye Med card and get a discount but that is it.
• Yahoo! IBM Retiree information exchange: "Re: Anthem - Blue View Vision" by Julian Thomas. Full excerpt: Aren't ophthalmologists covered by the medical plans?
• Yahoo! IBM Retiree information exchange: "Re: Anthem - Blue View Vision" by "ibmshaftee". Full excerpt: Aren't ophthalmologists covered by the medical plans? Only if it is a medical procedure, not covered for routine eye exams.
• Yahoo! IBM Retiree information exchange: "Re: Anthem - Blue View Vision" by "nkp766". Full excerpt: Go to http://www.anthem.com/preenrollment and log in with the ID "IBM" without the quotes. Click on "2012 Vision Plan Summary" and you will see that your 2012 eye exam is covered in full even if your doctor does not participate with Anthem. 2012 is a transition year where you get many of the same benefits you had with VSP. Now click on "2013 Vision Plan Summary" and you will see that starting in 2013 the Anthem plan is much worse than VSP if your doctor is Out-of-Network.

  If you can't get your doctor to join Anthem during 2012, you get much reduced vision benefits starting in 2013.

  lso, for those taking the Aetna Medicare Plan (PPO), your annual eye exam is covered so unless you need glasses or contact lenses during 2012, I see no reason to enroll in the Vision Plan. I have not checked the other Aetna plans.

• Yahoo! IBM Retiree information exchange: "Re: Anthem - Blue View Vision" by "jworman". Full excerpt: When I got the mailing, I checked with my optometrist he wasn't going to sign up with Anthem - Blue View Vision as they pay so little that he would perform his services at a loss. I went on line and cancelled my vision plan. There wasn't all that much difference, and my glasses can easily last for a couple of years. Oh well, the sign of times to come.
• Yahoo! IBM Retiree information exchange: "Re: Anthem - Blue View Vision" by "alwaysontheroad4bigblue". Full excerpt: I'm still an active employee. I posted this on the ibmemployeeissues group: IBM switched its vision plan from VSP to Anthem Blue View Vision for 2012. The annual premium for an employee and spouse for the Anthem plan is $213.60. DO NOT ASSUME that your existing eye doctor is in the Anthem plan. Mine is not. My wife's is. Since I've had the same eye doctor for over a decade, and I have a decade's worth of history including retinal scans, I do not want to switch to another doctor.

  I called my doctor's office (in Boulder) and she said she's received dozens of calls from IBMers asking about coverage. She also had received a list of IBM patients from VSP that would no longer be covered.

  She said that her office is trying to negotiate with IBM but that the reimbursement provided by Anthem is very, very low so she isn't confident that she'll make any progress.

  I've decided to forego the coverage and up my HCRA allowance.

• Alliance for Retired Americans: Retiree Leader: End of Super Committee Good News for Seniors. “Unconscionable” to Cut Retiree Programs to Pay for Tax Cuts for Millionaires. By Edward F. Coyle. Excerpts: “The lack of recommendations today from the Super Committee is good news for current and future retirees.

  “Over the past several months, activists with the Alliance for Retired Americans and other progressive groups helped send a clear message to Congress – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are critical lifelines for millions of Americans and cannot be sacrificed on the altar of even greater tax breaks for Wall Street and corporate CEOs.

• Wells Fargo news release: 80 Is The New 65 For Many Middle Class Americans When It Comes To Retirement, Wells Fargo Retirement Survey Finds. Excerpts: he concept of a “retirement age” is going the way of the typewriter, another 20th-century relic that has been made irrelevant by changing circumstances. Middle class Americans now expect to work until they have saved enough to afford to retire, according to results from the seventh annual Retirement Survey from Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC). Three fourths (76%) of the 1,500 middle class Americans surveyed by telephone by Harris Interactive in August and September 2011 say it is more important to have a specific amount saved before retirement, regardless of age, while only 20% say it is more important to retire at a specific age, regardless of savings.

  The survey also found:

  • A quarter (25%) of middle class Americans say they will “need to work until at least age 80” to live comfortably in retirement
  • Three-fourths (74%) of middle class Americans expect to work in their retirement years, including 39% of all respondents who will need to work to make ends meet or maintain their lifestyles, while 35% say they will work because they want to, rather than out of financial need.
  • Among middle class Americans age 40 to 59, 54% say they will “need to work,” compared to 34% of those age 25 to 39. Accordingly, only 25% of those between the ages of 40 and 59 say they will work in retirement because they “want to,” versus 45% of Americans between the ages of 25 and 39.
  • Of the Americans who will work in retirement, 47% say they will do “similar work” to their pre-retired years, while 42% say they will work in a position that requires “less responsibility.”

• Mother Jones: Inside the Corporate Plan to Occupy the Pentagon. Behind the growing push to slash soldiers' pensions and other military costs is a little-known advisory group—stacked with Wall Street executives. By Adam Weinstein. Excerpts: With time fast running out for the so-called deficit supercommittee, the mammoth amount of government money spent on the military has become a prime target in Washington. But the main focus isn't on big-ticket weapons projects or expensive wars—it's on retirement benefits for the roughly 17 percent of soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen who have served 20 years or more in uniform. Currently the total cost of their benefits is about $50 billion a year.

  Cuts to military pensions are "the kind of thing you have to consider," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in September. When President Obama unveiled his $3 trillion debt reduction plan the same month, it called GIs' benefits "out of line" with private employee retirement plans, saying the system was "designed for a different era of work." When Congress held a hearing on military retirements in October, Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) promoted a cheaper 401(k)-style plan that would slash existing benefits for many troops. "I see nothing wrong with them being able to choose a different retirement plan," he said.

  These ideas may sound like a bold new approach in an urgent moment—but in fact, the push for pension cuts and other corporate "reforms" at the Pentagon originates from an obscure advisory panel that has existed for a decade: the Defense Business Board. Its 21 members know little about military affairs, but they are rich in Wall Street experience, including with some of the biggest companies implicated in the 2008 financial meltdown. They are investment bank CEOs and CFOs, outsourcing experts, and layoff specialists who promote a corporate agenda of "behavior change" and "business solutions" in the military bureaucracy. The board proposes not only to slash and privatize military pensions, but also to have the Pentagon invest in oil futures, boost pay for its executives and political appointees, and make it easier for them to fire rank-and-file employees while scaling back those workers' collective-bargaining rights. ...

  Over the years, the board has recommended a series of "cost-saving" measures that would channel large amounts of money to private-sector businesses. Its members have consistently advocated for the Pentagon to engage in fuel hedging—investing in oil futures to lock in a supposedly low cost for their long-term fuel needs. The board's fuel-hedging push was led by member Denis Bovin, who was a top investment banker for Bear Stearns until the firm went bust in late 2008. After consulting with energy giants BP and Shell, among others, Bovin's team concluded that the Department of Defense should invest based on rising oil prices, even while he conceded that "as a whole, DoD is not highly exposed to fuel price volatility." Such deals, he noted, would incur investment transaction costs of "$10 to $250 million per year." Even though no federal agency currently engages in fuel hedging, the board tasked Bovin with another study on oil futures last January.

• Channel Register (United Kingdom): 1,000 Chinese workers strike at Apple and IBM supplier. Cupertino singled out on forced overtime, conditions. By Paul Kunert. Excerpts: Around 1,000 workers at a Chinese plant that manufactures components for Apple and IBM downed tools this week in protest against enforced overtime, a rights group has claimed. The disgruntled staffers - about a third of all employees - at Jingmo Electronics Corporation (JEC) in south China's industrial district of Shenzhen held a one-day strike on 22 November.

  The authorities dispatched several hundred police including riot officers to disperse the workers as they moved off-site and blocked a national highway.

  China Labour Watch (CLW) said: "the motivation behind the strike was the factory’s decision to make workers work nightly overtime." It claims that employees had been asked to work from 6pm to midnight and sometimes 2am on top of the usual four to four and a half day shifts from 7am to 11.30 or 1pm to 5pm.

  CLW said staff "commonly worked anywhere from 100 to 200 hours of overtime a month" but the factory refused to let them put the hours in at the weekend because under Chinese labour law JEC would have had to double the wages.