Hostess Used Employee Pensions to Fund Itself

[zeos3]

http://www.politicususa.com/betrayal-remedy-hostess-pensions-fund-bankruptcy.html


Even as Hostess blamed the unions, creditors accused Hostess of manipulating executive salaries in an attempt to get around bankruptcy laws, with then-chief executive Brian Driscoll’s salary going to $2.55 million from around $750,000 while “other executives’ salaries were increased by from 35% to 80%.”

It’s hard to see how this is not embezzlement, but apparently this happens so often that award-winning investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal Ellen Schultz wrote a book about it called “Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers.”

“Schultz uncovers decades of widespread deception during which employers have exaggerated their retiree burdens while lobbying for government handouts, secretly cutting pensions, tricking employees, and misleading shareholders. She reveals how companies: Siphon billions of dollars from their pension plans to finance downsizings and sell the assets in merger deals (and) Overstate the burden of rank-and-file retiree obligations to justify benefits cuts while simultaneously using the savings to inflate executive pay and pensions.”

[PDJane]

1. Yes. Some jail terms would be in order, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Rocky888]

2. How the hell do we fight these greedy immoral thieving monsters?

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. They re-wrote, or rather gutted, ERISA back in the 80s and each new re-write through administrations

both republican and Democratic, have made it worse. Today, your pension literally does not belong to you. You pay for it, but it is the property of the owners and they can do pretty much anything they want to with it, including just pocketing it on their way out the door.

When this came out yesterday, I replied that what the did was unlawful. It used to be. But, upon further investigation I found that stealing the workers money is now completely legal.

We are so much more fucked than we even know.

[Uben]

4. It's the Shitt Romney syndrome....

...find a way to steal people's money legally and abuse the hell out of it. That's what they do. Why it is not illegal to do this is beyond me. Romney is a good example of the scum that do this sort of thing. They should all be thrown in prison for life.

[WiffenPoof]

5. And They Wonder...

...why most Americans demand some sort of enforceable regulation(s) to combat this kind of behavior.

PLA