#pensioners and employees benefits

[seemabhatnagar]

"Upholding Pension Rights: Allahabad High Court Orders Pension Payment Despite GPF Deduction Lapse"

The High Court directed the respondents to ensure the payment of pension to the petitioner in accordance with the law, noting that the administrative lapses in GPF deductions should not deprive the petitioner of his rightful pension benefits.

Udai Narayan Sahu v. State of UP & 5 Others

WP 8170/2024

Before the High Court of Allahabad

Heard by Hon'ble Mr. Justice Subhash Vidyarthi J

Fact: The petitioner, Udai Narayan Sahu, an Assistant Teacher at M.M. Ali Memorial Higher Secondary School in Kanpur Nagar, retired from his position on March 31, 2023. Despite fulfilling his duties for nearly two decades, Sahu's request for a pension was denied by the authorities, leading him to file the present writ petition seeking justice.

Background: Despite fulfilling his duties for nearly two decades, the petitioner was denied a pension by the authorities

Legal Issue: Whether the petitioner, is entitled to receive a pension despite the lack of GPF deductions from his salary due to administrative delays.

Argument of the parties:

Petitioner's submission: He is entitled to a pension as per the relevant Government Orders and the Uttar Pradesh State Aided-Educational Institution Employee’s Contributory Provident Fund-Insurance Pension Rules.

Deduction towards C.P.F./G.P.F. is not a condition precedent for eligibility of an employee for receiving pension.

The mere fact that no deduction was made towards G.P.F. from the salary of the petitioner would not affect his eligibility to get pension after his retirement.

Respondent’s Submisssion: The District Inspector Of School, contended that the petitioner was not eligible for a pension because no GPF deductions were made from his salary due to the late allocation of a GPF account.

The G.P.F. account number was allotted to the petitioner when only 5 months and 13 days were left in his retirement whereas the rules says deduction of G.P.F. has to be stopped six month prior to the date of retirement of a teacher.

This technicality barred the petitioner from receiving his pension.

Court's Observation: The rules governing pension for employees like the petitioner do not make GPF deductions a prerequisite for pension eligibility.

The relevant rules and Government Orders make it clear that pension benefits should be extended to all eligible employees, and the failure to deduct GPF contributions due to administrative oversight should not prejudice the petitioner

[rightnewshindi]

क्या है यूनिफाइड पेंशन स्कीम, कर्मचारियों को कैसे होगा फायदा, कब से होगी लागू; यहां पढ़ें पूरी डिटेल

What is Unified Pension Scheme in Hindi: केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडल ने शनिवार शाम को यूनिफाइड पेंशन स्कीम की मंजूरी दे दी। सरकारी कर्मचारियों की तरफ से यूनिफाइड पेंशन स्कीम (Unified Pension Scheme) लागू करने के लिए मोदी सरकार की तारीफ की गई है। न्यूज एजेंसी PTI की एक रिपोर्ट के अनुसार, सरकारी कर्मचारियों ने केंद्र सरकार द्वारा उन्हें सुनिश्चित पेंशन देने के फैसले की तारीफ की। रिपोर्ट के अनुसार, सरकारी…

[townpostin]

Govt Unveils Unified Pension Scheme for Central Employees

New UPS offers choice between NPS and unified plan, set to launch April 1st Cabinet approves Unified Pension Scheme, granting central government staff option between NPS and UPS. New plan promises 50% of final salary as minimum pension after 25 years. NEW DELHI – The Cabinet has greenlit the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS), presenting central government employees with a choice between the existing…

[benefitsalliance]

Pension Plan Advisors Can Help You Plan a Better Retirement

Life after retirement is something that many people look forward to and dream about. Expert and experienced pension plan advisors can help you create a solid plan about your life as a retiree. 

[reasonsforhope]

Seven thousand more UAW members just walked off the job, expanding the strike to two more plants. Twenty-five thousand autoworkers are now on strike, and the walkout could continue to escalate if the Big Three don’t budge in negotiations.

[UAW president Shawn] Fain announced that Stellantis would be spared this time. The union had been expected to strike all three companies, but, said Region 1 director LaShawn English, three minutes before Fain was scheduled to go on Facebook Live, the UAW received frantic emails from company representatives.

[Note: Love that for the UAW. Also laughing so hard. Three minutes before the next round of strikes were annouced!!]

According to Fain, Stellantis made “significant progress” on cost-of-living allowances, the right not to cross a picket line, and the right to strike over product commitments and plant closures. “We are excited about this momentum at Stellantis and hope it continues,” Fain said...

“See You Next Week — Maybe?”

“These guys wanted to go out a long time ago,” said Cody Zaremba, a Local 602 member at the Lansing GM plant after the news broke that his plant would be joining the strike. “We’re ready. Everybody, truly, I believe, in the entire membership. They’re one with what’s going on.”

Five thousand workers at thirty-eight parts distribution centers across twenty-one states have been on strike since last Friday [September 22, 2023], along with thirteen thousand at three assembly plants in Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri who walked out on September 15. (See a map of all struck facilities here.) ...

The UAW is now calling on community supporters to organize small teams to canvass dealerships that sell and repair Big Three cars and trucks. On Tuesday, the union issued a canvassing tool kit with instructions, flyers, press releases, and talking points.

In negotiations with Ford and GM, autoworkers have clinched some important gains. Among them is an agreement by both companies to end at least one of the many tiers in current contracts, putting workers at certain parts plants back on the same wage scale as assembly workers. The top rate for Big Three assembly workers is currently around $32...

Ford was spared in last week’s escalation, because bargainers there had made further progress on gains for workers.

But today, the UAW once again called out workers at Ford and GM, putting some muscle behind its bold demands — a big wage boost, a shorter workweek, elimination of tiers, cost-of-living adjustments tied to inflation, protection from plant closures, conversion of temps to permanent employees, and the restoration of retiree health care and benefit-defined pensions to all workers.

-via Jacobin, September 29, 2023. Article continues below.

Keep Them Guessing

This year, for the first time in recent history, the union has played the three auto companies against each other with its strike strategy, departing from the union’s tradition of choosing one target company and patterning an agreement at the other two.

The stand-up strike strategy draws inspiration from an approach known as CHAOS (Create Havoc Around Our System), first deployed in 1993 by Alaska Airlines flight attendants, who announced they would be striking random flights. Although they struck only seven flights in a two-month period, Alaska had to send scabs on every plane, just in case. The unpredictability drew enormous media attention and drove management up the wall. Meanwhile the union was able to conserve its strength and minimize risk.

The companies miscalculated where the UAW was going to strike first, stockpiling engines and shipping them cross-country to the wrong facilities. Autoworkers relished the self-inflicted supply chain chaos on UAW Facebook groups and other social media platforms.

Nonstrikers’ morale on the factory floor has gotten a boost from rank and filers organizing to refuse voluntary overtime. With support both from Fain and the reform caucus Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), workers have been encouraging each other to “Eight and Skate,” meaning to turn down extra work and decline to do management any favors.

Majority Public Support

A majority of Americans support the UAW strikers, and the Big Three have taken a PR hit since the strike began, according to a new survey conducted by the business intelligence firm Caliber.

“Eighty-seven percent of respondents told us they were aware of the strike,” Caliber CEO Shahar Silbershatz told the Intercept. “It’s clear the strike is not just causing commercial repercussions, but reputational repercussions as well.”

These reputational repercussions will only worsen...

"We Can Unmake It"

Fain didn't pull any punches in his speech... “That’s what’s different about working-class people. Whether we’re building cars or trucks or running parts distribution centers; whether we’re writing movies or performing TV shows... we do the heavy lifting. We do the real work. Not the CEOs, not the executives.

"And though we don’t know it, that’s what power is. We have the power. The world is of our making. The economy is of our making. This industry is of our making.

“And as we’ve shown, when we withhold our labor, we can unmake it.”

-via Jacobin, September 29, 2023

[palms-upturned]

For US unions like the UAW — which has thousands of members in weapons factories making the bombs, missiles, and aircraft used by Israel, as well in university departments doing research linked to the Israeli military — the Palestinian trade union call to action is particularly relevant. When the UAW’s national leadership came out in support of a cease-fire on December 1, they also voted to establish a “Divestment and Just Transition Working Group.” The stated purpose of the working group is to study the UAW’s own economic ties to Israel and explore ways to convert war-related industries to production for peaceful purposes while ensuring a just transition for weapons workers.

Members of UAW Labor for Palestine say they have started making visits to a Colt factory in Connecticut, which holds a contract to supply rifles to the Israeli military, to talk with their fellow union members about Palestine, a cease-fire, and a just transition. They want to see the union’s leadership support such organizing activity.

“If UAW leaders decided to, they could, tomorrow, form a national organizing campaign to educate and mobilize rank-and-file towards the UAW’s own ceasefire and just transition call,” UAW Labor for Palestine members said in a statement. “They could hold weapons shop town halls in every region; they could connect their small cadre of volunteer organizers — like us — to the people we are so keen to organize with; they could even send some of their staff to help with this work.”

On January 21, the membership of UAW Local 551, which represents 4,600 autoworkers at Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant (who were part of last year’s historic stand-up strike) endorsed the Palestinian trade unions’ call to not cooperate in the production and transportation of arms for Israel. Ten days later, UAW Locals 2865 and 5810, representing around forty-seven thousand academic workers at the University of California, passed a measure urging the union’s national leaders to ensure that the envisioned Divestment and Just Transition Working Group “has the needed resources to execute its mission, and that Palestinian, Arab and Muslim workers whose communities are disproportionately affected by U.S.-backed wars are well-represented on the committee.”

Members of UAW Locals 2865 and 5810 at UC Santa Cruz’s Astronomy Department have pledged to withhold any labor that supports militarism and to refuse research collaboration with military institutions and arms companies. In December, unionized academic workers from multiple universities formed Researchers Against War (RAW) to expose and cut ties between their research and warfare, and to organize in their labs and departments for more transparency about where the funding for their work comes from and more control over what their labor is used for. RAW, which was formed after a series of discussions by union members first convened by US Labor Against Racism and War last fall, hosted a national teach-in and planning meeting on February 12.

Meanwhile, public sector workers in New York City have begun their own campaign to divest their pension money from Israel. On January 25, rank-and-file members of AFSCME District Council (DC) 37 launched a petition calling on the New York City Employees’ Retirement System to divest the $115 million it holds in Israeli securities. The investments include $30 million in bonds that directly fund the Israeli military and its activities. “As rank-and-file members of DC 37 who contribute to and benefit from the New York City Employees’ Retirement System and care about the lives of working people everywhere, we refuse to support the Israeli government and the corporations that extract profit from the killing of innocent civilians,” the petition states.

In an election year when President Joe Biden and other Democratic candidates will depend heavily on organized labor for donations and especially get-out-the-vote efforts, rank and filers are also trying to push their unions to exert leverage on the president by getting him to firmly stand against the ongoing massacre in Gaza. NEA members with Educators for Palestine are calling on their union’s leaders to withdraw their support for Biden’s reelection campaign until he stops “sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel,” marching from AFT headquarters to NEA headquarters in Washington, DC on February 10 to assert their demand. Similarly, after the UAW International Executive Board endorsed Biden last month — a decision that sparked intense division within the union — UAW Labor for Palestine is demanding the endorsement be revoked “until [Biden] calls for a permanent ceasefire and stops sending weapons to Israel.”

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Space Karen is a monster. They had opportunities to unionize but they succumbed to pressure from Elongated Muskrat and Texas Republicans and now they’ll be living on the production line. How stupid are you to reject unionization? Now they’re slaves like every other non-union employee in the country.

Republicans in red states pass laws called “right to work”, which is more Republican name trickery. “Right to work” laws prevent unions/organized labor. What it literally means is that companies have the right to make YOU work without any benefits, for minimum wage, without any right to protest wage theft or unsafe conditions, no recourse against unfair labor practices, and to put you on “on demand schedules,” The latter means no set regular hours, 9-5 today then 9-9 the day after, then 1-8, or no hours at all for days or weeks until you quit and can’t collect. “On demand scheduling” is abosolutely cruel. You never get to recover properly, you can never make plans outside of work, you can’t attend school or have a second job, and you miss out on all the major life events of your family. This leads to resentment, divorce, and alienated children who feel unloved.

Even blue states have bare minimum labor laws in place to control abuses by employers. Try going to the state for help in a dispute with your boss. Try hiring a lawyer when you’re poor or even if you’re not lawyers don’t want to touch these cases.

We are already a nation of hopeless wage slaves. Biden and the Democrats are making progress in passing laws to protect workers and unions but it will all be swept away if Republicans regain the White House and Congress. Some people won’t learn until they’re chained to a machine in a building with suicide nets outside the windows like in China.

It took almost two hundred years to get unions, workers rights, and work place safety laws put into place. They’ve nearly all been eroded into a forgotten past since Republican Ronald Reagan, and Fox News, was elected in 1980. Nearly all of you reading this don’t even know a time when workers only needed one job to support a home and family, had pensions, and had health insurance that was provided. Now you live with 2-3 jobs, have no health insurance, can’t afford a home (or rent), can’t afford college or even a new car, and make less than your grandparents. The media glosses this over calling the extra jobs “side hustles” and your lack of a career with dignity is because you’re a generation of “self starters.”

You weren’t born to be a wage slave for billionaire oligarchs and the petty tyrants they hire to be middle managers. Spread the word and unionize. Fight for it. People in the 1800’s literally battled armed mercenaries, cops, and the military for the right to union jobs that let them live and earn with dignity. Don’t let their spilled blood and deaths be in vain. The United Auto Workers and other unions tried repeatedly to get Tesla unionized. Unions are out there and willing to help. It only takes a few phone calls to get the ball rolling.

Muskrat promised his workers free frozen yogurt and a roller coaster ride from the parking lot to factory if they voted against unions, I shit you not. He never delivered either. He did spend millions on union avoidance firms to come in and lie and scare workers into voting no. Now they’re treated like cotton plantation slaves and told they will be literally living on a production line.

To put this into the identity politics millennials are drawn to, unions are the only working environment where marginalized people are protected and have recourse against discrimination and mistreatment in the workplace. If you are mistreated you can file a grievance and if the management doesn’t redress the issue then they are taken to contractually mandated arbitration or court with union supplied lawyers. If you have never worked in a union shop you have no idea what it’s like to not be fearful, to have dignity, and to know people are obligated to protect you from management.

It’s the only non-union automaker in the country.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The IRS will do your taxes for you (if that's what you prefer)

This Saturday (May 20), I’ll be at the GAITHERSBURG Book Festival with my novel Red Team Blues; then on May 22, I’m keynoting Public Knowledge’s Emerging Tech conference in DC.

On May 23, I’ll be in TORONTO for a book launch that’s part of WEPFest, a benefit for the West End Phoenix, onstage with Dave Bidini (The Rheostatics), Ron Diebert (Citizen Lab) and the whistleblower Dr Nancy Olivieri.

America is a world leader in allowing private companies to levy taxes on its citizens, including (stay with me here), a tax on paying your taxes.

In most of the world, the tax authorities prepare a return for each taxpayer, sending them a prepopulated form with all their tax details — collected from employers and other regulated entities, like pension funds and commodities brokers, who must report income to the tax office. If the form is correct, the taxpayer signs it and sends it back (in some countries, taxpayers don’t even have to do that — they just ignore the return unless they want to amend it).

No one has to use this system, of course. If you have complex finances, or cash income that doesn’t show up in mandatory reporting, or if you’d just prefer to prepare your own return or pay an accountant to do so for you, you can. But for the majority of people, those with income from a job or a pension, and predictable deductions, say, from caring for minor children, filing your annual tax return takes between zero and five minutes and costs absolutely nothing.

Not so in America. America is one of the very few rich countries (including Canada, though this is changing), where the government won’t just send you a form containing all the information it already has, ready to file. As is common in complex societies, America has a complex tax code (further complexified by deliberate obfuscation by billionaires and their lickspittle Congressjerks, who deliberately perforate the tax code with loopholes for the ultra-rich):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#shitty-man-of-history-theory

That complexity means that most of us can’t figure out how to file our own taxes, at least not without committing scarce hours out of the only life we will ever have to poring over the ramified and obscure maze of tax-law.

Why doesn’t the IRS just send you a tax-return? Well, because the tax-prep industry — an oligopoly dominated by a handful of massive, ultra-profitable firms — bribes Congress (that is, “lobbies”) to prohibit this. They are aided in this endeavor by swivel-eyed lunatic anti-tax obsessives, like Grover Nordquist and Americans for Tax Reform, who argue that paying taxes should be as difficult and painful as possible in order to foment opposition to taxation itself.

The tax-prep industry is dominated by a single firm, Intuit, who took over tax-prep through its anticompetitive acquisition of TurboTax, itself a chimera of multiple companies gobbled up in a decades-long merger orgy. Inuit is a freaky company. For decades, its defining CEO Brad Smith ran the company as a cult of personality organized around his trite sayings, like “Do whatever makes your heart beat fastest,” stenciled on t-shirts worn by employees. Other employees donned Brad Smith masks for selfies with their Beloved Leader.

Smith’s cult also spent decades lobbying to keep the IRS from offering a free filing service. Instead, Intuit joined a cartel that offered a “Free File” service to some low- and medium-income Americans:

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free

But the cartel sabotaged Free File from the start. They blocked search engines from indexing their Free File services, then bought Google ads for “free file” that directed searchers to soundalike programs (“Free Filing,” etc) that hit them for hundreds of dollars in tax-prep fees. They also funneled users to versions of Free File they were ineligible for, a fact that was only revealed after the user spent hours painstaking entering their financial information, whereupon they would be told that they could either start over or pay hundreds of dollars to finish filing with a commercial product.

Intuit also pioneered the use of binding arbitration waivers that stripped its victims of the right to sue the company after it defrauded them. This tactic blew up in Intuit’s face after its victims banded together to mass-file thousands of arbitration claims, sending the company to court to argue that binding arbitration wasn’t enforceable after all:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/24/uber-for-arbitration/#nibbled-to-death-by-ducks

But justice eventually caught up with Intuit. After a series of stinging exposes by Propublica journalists Justin Elliot, Paul Kiel and others, NY Attorney General Letitia James led a coalition of AGs from all 50 states and DC that extracted a $141m settlement for 4.4 million Americans who had been tricked into paying for Turbotax services they were entitled to get for free:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/turbotax-to-begin-payouts-after-it-cheated-customers-new-york-ag-says/ar-AA1aNXfi

Fines are one thing, but the only way to comprehensively end the predatory tax-prep scam is to bring the USA kicking and screaming into the 20th century, when most of the rest of the world brought in free tax-prep for ordinary income earners. That’s just what’s happening: the IRS is trialing a free tax prep service for next year’s tax season:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/15/irs-free-file/

This, despite Intuit’s all-out blitz attack on Congress and the IRS to keep free tax-prep from ever reaching the American people:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/20/turbotaxed/#counter-intuit

That charm offensive didn’t stop the IRS from releasing a banger of a report that made it clear that free tax-prep was the most efficient, humane and cost-effective way to manage an advanced tax-system (something the rest of the world has known for decades):

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5788.pdf

Of course, Intuit is furious, as in spitting feathers. Rick Heineman, Intuit’s spokesprofiteer, told KQED that “A direct-to-IRS e-file system is wholly redundant and is nothing more than a solution in search of a problem. That solution will unnecessarily cost taxpayers billions of dollars and especially harm the most vulnerable Americans.”

https://www.kqed.org/news/11949746/the-irs-is-building-its-own-online-tax-filing-system-tax-prep-companies-arent-happy

Despite Upton Sinclair’s advice that “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it,” I will now attempt to try to explain to Heineman why he is unfuckingbelievably, eye-wateringly wrong.

“e-file…is wholly redundant”: Well, no, Rick, it’s not redundant, because there is no existing Free File system except for the one your corrupt employer made and hid “in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’”

“nothing more than a solution in search of a problem”: The problem this solves is that Americans have to pay Intuit billions to pay their taxes. It’s a tax on paying taxes. That is a problem.

“unnecessarily cost taxpayers billions of dollars”: No, it will save taxpayers the billions of dollars (they pay you).

“harm the most vulnerable Americans”: Here is an area where Heineman can speak with authority, because few companies have more experience harming vulnerable Americans.

Take the Child Tax Credit. This is the most successful social program in living memory, a single initiative that did more to lift American children out of poverty than any other since the days of the Great Society. It turns out that giving poor people money makes them less poor, which is weird, because neoliberal economists have spent decades assuring us that this is not the case:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

But the Child Tax Credit has been systematically sabotaged, by Intuit lobbyists, who successfully added layer after layer of red tape — needless complexity that makes it nearly impossible to claim the credit without expert help — from the likes of Intuit:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/29/three-times-is-enemy-action/#ctc

It worked. As Ryan Cooper writes in The American Prospect: “between 13 and 22 percent of EITC benefits are gulped down by tax prep companies”:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-05-17-irs-takes-welcome-step-20th-century/

So yes, I will defer to Rick Heineman and his employer Intuit on the subject of “harming the most vulnerable Americans.” After all, they’re the experts. National champions, even.

Now I want to address the peply guys who are vibrating with excitement to tell me about their 1099 income, the cash money they get from their lemonade stand, the weird flow of krugerrands their relatives in South African FedEx to them twice a year, etc, that means that free file won’t work for them because the IRS doesn’t actually understand their finances.

That’s a hard problem, all right. Luckily, there is a very simple answer for this: use a tax-prep service.

Actually, it’s not a hard problem. Just use a tax-prep service. That’s it. No one is going to force you to use the IRS’s free e-file. All you need to do to avoid the socialist nightmare of (checks notes) living with less red-tape is: continue to do exactly what you’re already doing.

Same goes for those of you who have a beloved family accountant you’ve used since the Eisenhower administration. All you need to do to continue to enjoy the advice of that trusted advisor is…nothing. That’s it. Simply don’t change anything.

One final note, addressing the people who are worried that the IRS will cheat innocent taxpayers by not giving them all the benefits they’re entitled to. Allow me here to simply tap the sign that says “between 13 and 22 percent of EITC benefits are gulped down by tax prep companies.” In other words, when you fret about taxpayers being ripped off, you’re thinking of Intuit, not the IRS. Just calm down. Why not try using fluoridated toothpaste? You’ll feel better, and I promise I won’t tell your friends at the Gadsen Flag appreciation society.

Your secret is safe with me.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/17/free-as-in-freefile/#tell-me-something-i-dont-know

[Image ID: A vintage drawing of Uncle Sam toasting with a glass of Champagne, superimposed over an IRS 1040 form that has been fuzzed into a distorted halftone pattern.]

[zvaigzdelasas]

Ford Motor Co. and the UAW have a tentative agreement that both have called a record deal that makes history. UAW President Shawn Fain gave a preview of what's in it Wednesday night on social media but plans to hold meetings with local union leaders and their members who will review it in detail. Any potential deal between the union and the automaker is subject to review by local union leaders from around the country elected by the members, called the UAW National Ford Council, who will travel to Detroit prior to a ratification vote. The UAW said the meeting would happen on Sunday, and they would vote on whether to send the tentative agreement to members.[...]

The union said the tentative agreement also includes:

- An 11% wage increase the first year and increases totaling 25% over a 4½-year contract - Cumulatively raising the top wage by more than 30% to more than $40 an hour Raising the starting wage by 68%, to more than $28 an hour - Providing a raise of more than 150% to the lowest-paid workers at Ford over the life of the agreement, with some workers receiving an immediate 85% increase upon ratification - Reinstating major benefits lost during the Great Recession, including cost-of-living adjustments and a three-year wage progression - Killing different pay rates, or tiers, for workers Improving benefits for current retirees, workers with pensions and those who have 401(k) plans Including the right to strike over plant closures[...]

In addition, the Free Press has learned from people involved in the process who do not have authority to speak on it publicly that the tentative agreement includes the following: - A $5 per years-of-service raise on pensions, so a 25-year employee would see $125 more per month - A $50,000 special retirement incentive - Two weeks paid parental leave, five weeks vacation and Juneteenth as a recognized holiday[...]

While hourly employees have returned to work at Ford, thousands of striking workers remain on the picket lines at GM and Stellantis properties. The strike against automakers began Sept. 15.

26 Oct 23

[ahedderick]

Music Man

Backstory: I used to like musicals, and was pretty familiar with all the 'oldies.' Also, I was in school choirs for years and then I had a job playing piano for a seniors-only choir for a couple years, so I got a LOT of exposure to songs from musicals.

Second; when I first got my full time job as a pension actuary, the company I worked for was privately owned and had great benefits. One of their standard once-a-year treats for the employees was to buy out all the tickets for one night for a play at the local theater, so one of their performances was just for our company (and spouses). That was a really neat, fun perk; most of the employees loved it and the theater got a boost as well.

Third; when my husband and I were dating and then newly married, there was one particular song I'd often hum or sing that just drove him batty. Seventy-six Trombones from the Music Man. Of course, once I learned it could be used to Annoy, I definitely committed to the bit! As one does.

Sooooo, it's that time of year; the company announces that we will be having theater night, and the current production is The Music Man! I. I may have. I may have cackled evilly at my desk.

"Theater night on Thursday!" I told my spouse. "It's a musical."

We went. Sat in our seats. The curtains go up on Harold Hill, headed for River City with a big con in mind. Now, my husband doesn't actually know anything about this particular musical. He is completely unsuspecting. Until. The moment. When the band strikes up the jaunty tune, and the lyrics to 'Seventy-Six Trombones" float out into the auditorium.

My husband recoiled like he'd been shot, gave me a wild-eyed look, and spluttered in rage. I was doubled over, laughing until tears leaked out of my eyes. Trying not to disturb anyone else in the audience. It was a perfect moment. The cosmos aligned with my desire to be a pest and a nuisance. Chef's kiss!

[anotherkindofmindpod]

Hi!

I'm absolutely LOVING Fine Tuning, and I appreciated your most recent episode, "Shells and Barriers." I think what you're doing is so important and I wish a link to the podcast could be mandatorily stamped on the cover of every copy of Tune In ever sold.

I do have a question that I was hoping you guys would go into in this episode but you didn't. Maybe it would have been too much of a side-track for the podcast and maybe you could answer it here?

What DID they do without her money? I'm not really familiar with british council housing in the fifties, but didn't they have that place in allerton because Mary was a government employee? And didn't she make most of the money? And didn't Jim have a gambling problem?

This is a great question. I know Jim kept working and apparently the Aunties contributed food once a week or so. Obviously Paul contributed to the household once he started making a bit of money with the band, but that wasn't for at least a couple years. I admit I'm also woefully ignorant of the British social system, especially in the 50s. I assume Mary had some sort of benefits package that would've allowed her dependent children to remain in the council home for free. Did she have (the equivalent of) social security benefits? A pension? Life insurance? Maybe some of our listeners can help! Thanks for listening!

[st-just]

Years later, autopsies would list all the ways the union and workers had been complicit in their own demise. Their contract gains had become unaffordable for the company – not just on wages, but on benefits such as pensions and retiree health coverage, and extended vacations that, for some senior workers, included thirteen weeks off every five years. Their insistence on the ‘past practices’ clause in their contract, which they gained in the 1950s to protect members against automation, prevented the company form assigning workers in the most efficient ways. The union too often covered up for lazy or unproductive workers, the ones who tucked into a truck cab for a nap.

There was truth to all this. It was also true that any indulgence or fecklessness on the part of the union was more than matched by upper management at Bethlehem Steel. Veteran executives were getting seven week vacations by 1980; there were twelve paid holidays for white collar employees, including UN Day and a floating holiday. There were company-paid security forces and chauffeurs. There was bureaucratic bloat and empire-building to rival that of any government agency; in the quarter-century before 1980, the company doubled its ranks of vice-president or higher and, as John Strohmeyer wrote, ‘each of these vice-presidents required there own assistants, assistants-to, managers, assistant managers, and secretaries.’ In 1980, the party celebrated a new chairman with a party in Boca Raton for all its managers and their wives, five hundred people in all – and then sent the incoming and outgoing chairmen and their wives on a global tour in the corporate jet with stops in Singapore, Cairo and London. When the new chairman left six years later, after presiding over $2 billion in losses, he rewarded himself with an 11 percent raise and approved $1 million severance packages for all thirteen vice presidents. One vice president used a company jet to fly his kids to college and go to a vacation retreat in upstate New York. Rank-and-file workers were not blind to such excesses, and took them as a model.

-Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America, by Alec MacGillis

[actualbampot]

Sorry guys, but a $5m running cost (35k per minute of footage) to produce 1 volume of RWBY should not shock you as expensive.

Just for fun, let's compare by doing a little bit of very dubious math against my favourite mistress: Games Development.

To start off, we want the running cost of JUST the team in say, a year. DISCLAIMER: This is a ballpark, not the word of god.

In the Games Industry, the average salary in the UK is £40k per person

÷ by 260 working days = £153 per person per day

× an average team size (100) = 15,300 per team per day

× 260 working days = £3,978,000

Again, this is the running cost of a team in 1 year ONLY by salary.

Then you have the following employer costs top of that. I can only quantify on a UK average:

- employee benefits

- recruitment

- National insurance

- studio rental

- energy costs

- liability insurance

- pension contributions

= £40,000 per employee per year

THEN you have software costs, which I'm not going to include here without knowing all the software and the types of licences being used. To give context: A single license for Autodesk Maya costs around £5.9k for 3 years.

In total:

£7,978,000 GBP

$10,079,963 USD <- Purely information, remember this is UK average, not US

My 2-cents: It's not a question of how expensive RWBY is to produce, it is a question of how broke Roosterteeth are.

[benefitsalliance]

Learn About The Health Insurance in Canada

For those who are unable to have health coverage from their employer, or purchase insurance on their own, it is imperative that they know all of the resources that are available to them.  Learn about the health insurance in Canada that employers in Canada typically provide.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Hundreds get laid off so CEO’s can get pay raises and bonuses. Something’s wrong with the current corporate climate. These bastards loot their own companies and crush their own employees and the public. Mitt Romney was the proto-corporate raider. He made millions from hostile takeovers, shut-downs, massive layoffs, union busting, and theft of pension funds. He hides hundreds of millions in offshore accounts so he won’t have to pay taxes or share with his “religious” community.

Romney is not a moderate or even a good person. He is a massively corrupt and arrogant oligarch fascist. He holds the all-time record for taking NRA bribes (most of which came during his failed presidential bid). He has put hundreds of thousands out of work by shuttering numerous businesses. He has put tens of thousands more into the poor house by reducing them from full-time union with benefits to part-time without benefits. He even hired “illegals” (as the Republikkkans say) to landscape his mansion and vacation properties for less than minimum wage. He has never donated to charity and has voted 99.9% of the time with conservative Republikkkans. In interviews he is unable to say what food staples or gasoline costs. He is beyond out of touch and incredibly and unapologetically tone deaf. His squabbles with Trump are purely personal and have nothing to do with helping the people or preserving democracy. He can never be allowed into the White House.

[bardic-inspo]

Unsolicited Lore Dump

Thanks to the wonderful @paganwitchisis and @pinkberrytea for the tags! This is such a fun get-to-know you game!

Do you make your bed? No and I have no shame about it because I honestly don't really see the point. I straighten the covers at night before getting in.

Favorite number? Numbers greater than 10 with 2 in it! 12, 22, 32, etc.

What's your job? I work in HR, but not in hiring/firing/performance management. I do benefits administration, specifically for a closed pension plan. This means I work with a lot of retirees and older folks. I also work on transitioning active employees into retirement, benefits for beneficiaries when someone passes away, and setting up benefits splits resulting from divorces.

If you could go back to school would you? Not full time, no. I am too burnt out to flourish in that environment. I did 18 credits + two jobs my last three or so semesters of undergrad and that fried me something awful even this far removed from it. BUT, if I could cut my work schedule in half (without a drop in income) and take 1-2 classes at a time, I certainly would. I'd like to take foreign language classes, and I've always really love social sciences courses. I have a minor in poli sci that could be cool to turn into a complete degree/major.

Can you parallel park? Decently, yes. I could with my old compact car, but I'm much better now that I have a back-up cam.

Do you think aliens are real? Yes in the sense in that the universe is vast and it seems highly unlikely we're the only life forms in it. But I don't think it's anything like movies or video games might make it out to be. I think it's also possible that lifeforms used to exist elsewhere or will someday exist elsewhere but have either gone extinct or haven't yet emerged.

Can you drive a manual car? Nope, and I don't really have interest in learning.

What's your guilty pleasure? I'm working hard to have less and less guilt about any pleasures I have. But I suppose I'd say fanfic and hyperfixating on video game characters in general. Beyond just enjoying the game itself; really deep diving and getting sucked into a character or character(s) and running through rabbit holes imagining them in all sorts of scenarios, AUs, etc.

Tattoos? Yes! I have carpe diem on one foot, and a celtic triple spiral on another, gotten at age 18 and 19 respectively. I want to get a dragon someday, and have toyed with the idea of getting a 'sister' tattoo with it of willowherb (said to be the first sort of plant that comes back after a forest fire). I've also toyed with the idea of the dragon in more of a resting position, breathing to life a little campfire.

Favorite color? Purple or blue. I also like winey colors (reds and purples)

Favorite types of music? My music taste is incredibly eclectic, but I'd broadly say pop rock or pop punk.

Do you like puzzles? Sort of! I like ones that are hard enough to make me feel smart. I get easily frustrated by things I can't figure out somewhat quickly, though. I enjoy sudoku.

Any phobias? I struggle with bugs, though I've gotten marginally better over time and can handle small spiders on my own, now. Due to a real, real rough apartment experience, I generally freak out about mice as well. I can keep my cool if they're in an enclosure like in a pet store, though I don't like looking at them there, either. I also have a recurring dream about accidentally driving off a cliff and so I get super tense and nervous driving on bridges.

Favorite childhood sport? Swimming.

Do you talk to yourself? In the car, or if I'm alone for a longer period of time. I work from home on Mondays/Fridays and find myself doing it more often those days.

What movies do you adore? Oh gosh, I honestly don't often rewatch movies, I'd generally prefer to watch something new instead. But uh, the LotR trilogy is pretty precious to me. Dune 2 was great! I liked Get Out and Nope. I remember liking Dr. Sleep a lot, too, but I only watched it once and it's sort of a blur in my memory. Recently watched Saving Private Ryan for the first time and it kind of fucked me up. I'm pretty eclectic in what I like with movies.

Coffee or tea? Black coffee. Death before decaf.

First thing you wanted to be growing up? I think maybe an author. Also a fairy godmother for a long time. I still kinda wanna be both.

No pressure tags!: @electricshoebox, @halkuonn, @snowfolly, @tragedybunny, @tallymonster,

@scrytpe, and @mutualcombat <3