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About
The “Great Pension Robbery” happens in broad fucking daylight while the financial press politely looks away. Corporate raiders in Italian suits are gutting your retirement like a fish on a dock, and calling it “restructuring” with straight faces while their PR flacks serve champagne. These are the same bastards who buy vacation homes in the Hamptons using the “excess pension assets” they’ve clawed back from mechanics, nurses, and factory workers who earned every goddamn cent.
The pension fund disappearing act is the slickest three-card monte game in late capitalism – the money never where you think it is, always vanishing under the shell you didn’t pick, while the dealer grins at you from the boardroom of a holding company registered in the Cayman Islands. They’ve rewritten the rules so their money is sacred and your money is a “liability” they need to “manage” – meaning siphon into executive compensation packages while you’re told there’s “market volatility” or some other meaningless horseshit.
TACTICAL BREAKDOWN
This action creates a distributed tracking and early warning system for pension fund manipulation that:
- Monitors SEC filings for early signs of pension “restructuring”
- Tracks private equity acquisition patterns targeting pension-heavy companies
- Creates a community alert system for affected workers
- Develops media pressure packages with pre-analyzed data
- Builds solidarity networks across affected communities
IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE
Phase 1: Research Foundation
Step 1: Document Collection Hub
Begin by establishing a document collection system for SEC filings, particularly Form 5500s and 10-Ks that contain pension obligation details. Don’t waste time with fancy platforms – a simple shared Google Drive works for starters, though security-conscious groups should consider encrypted alternatives like ProtonDrive. The key is systematic organization by company, industry, and year that allows for pattern recognition. Set up automated scrapers using free tools like ParseHub or ImportFromWeb to pull these filings directly from the SEC’s EDGAR database as they appear.
Step 2: Baseline Analysis
Create baseline profiles for target companies by extracting three years of historical pension data. Focus on the most revealing metrics: funding ratios, discount rate assumptions, expected return rates, and any “surplus assets” claims. These numbers tell the real story behind the corporate PR. When a company suddenly changes its discount rate assumption from 6% to 7.5%, they’re not being “optimistic” – they’re manufacturing paper gains to justify raids on the fund. Document these baselines in standardized templates that allow quick comparison and anomaly detection.
Step 3: Vulnerability Identification
Map potential targeting patterns by identifying companies with specific pension vulnerability markers. Look for recently merged companies, those with significant “overfunded” pension status claims, firms with recent private equity investment, and those with declining industries but substantial pension assets. These companies are prime targets for extraction. Cross-reference with executive compensation changes and unusual pension asset transfers. This process creates your high-priority monitoring list where attacks are most likely imminent.
Phase 2: Monitoring System
Step 1: Alert Triggers
Develop specific numerical triggers that signal potential pension manipulation in progress. These include: pension freezes announced alongside executive compensation increases, dramatic changes in actuarial assumptions, transfer of pension obligations to insurance companies, unusual borrowing against pension assets, and accelerated lump-sum buyout offers to retirees. The key is catching these moves BEFORE they’re fully implemented, when resistance still has leverage. Create standardized language explaining the significance of each trigger in clear, non-technical terms.
Step 2: Distribution Network
Build a multi-channel distribution system for alerts that reaches workers, union representatives, financial journalists, and community organizers simultaneously. This system should combine email newsletters, Signal groups, dedicated subreddits, and partnerships with labor-focused media. The power lies in synchronizing information across all affected groups, preventing the company from isolating and picking off individual stakeholders. Each alert should include both raw data and accessible analysis explaining the potential impact in human terms.
Step 3: Response Templates
Develop pre-packaged response kits for each type of pension manipulation tactic. These kits should include: sample FOIA requests to pension regulators, media inquiry templates for journalists, open letter formats for affected workers, social media campaign materials, and legal precedent summaries for potential challenges. The goal is enabling rapid, coordinated response that doesn’t require financial expertise from every participant. These templates transform complex financial maneuvers into accessible, actionable information.
Phase 3: Intervention Leverage
Step 1: Media Pressure Packages
Create media-ready exposure packages for journalists that convert complex pension maneuvers into compelling narratives. Include personal impact stories from affected workers, clear visualizations of the financial manipulation, expert quotes from pension authorities, and comparisons to similar historical cases. The most effective packages juxtapose executive compensation increases directly against pension cuts in stark visual formats that make the extraction undeniable. These packages should be timed for release during company earnings calls for maximum impact.
Step 2: Regulatory Intervention
Develop targeted approaches to pension regulatory bodies including the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and Department of Labor. Prepare evidence packages specifically formatted for regulatory review that highlight potential violations of ERISA provisions and fiduciary duty breaches. Focus particularly on questionable actuarial assumptions and asset transfers. The goal isn’t necessarily winning immediate regulatory action but creating documented paper trails of concerns that support later legal challenges and establish pattern evidence.
Step 3: Solidarity Networks
Build cross-company solidarity networks connecting workers affected by the same pension extraction tactics or targeted by the same private equity firms. These networks should facilitate knowledge transfer about successful resistance strategies, create mutual support structures for prolonged campaigns, and enable coordinated actions across multiple company sites. The most effective networks connect current workers with retirees who often have different legal standing but shared interests, preventing companies from playing these groups against each other.
RESOURCE DIRECTORY
Databases & Research Tools:
- EDGAR Database (SEC filings repository): sec.gov/edgar.shtml
- Form 5500 Search Application: efast.dol.gov
- Who Owns What Corporate Research Tool: littlesis.org
Technical Support:
- Pension Rights Center: pensionrights.org
- Economic Policy Institute – Retirement Program: epi.org/research/retirement
- National Institute on Retirement Security: nirsonline.org
Legal Resources:
- Pension Justice Network: pensionjustice.org
- National Pension Lawyers Network: npln.com
- ERISA Class Action Monitoring: erisafraud.com
EXAMPLES FROM THE FIELD
The United Airlines ESOP battle showed the power of coordinated information tracking when employee-owners created an early warning system that spotted unusual pension asset transfers six weeks before formal announcements. Their rapid response network distributed analysis to 11,000 workers in 72 hours, generating enough pressure to modify the most extreme provisions of the plan.
In Michigan, a coalition of public employees built a similar system tracking municipal pension manipulations across 14 counties, leveraging their findings into successful legal challenges that reversed over $28 million in questionable pension asset reallocations. Their system’s key innovation was standardized financial literacy training that empowered rank-and-file workers to recognize manipulation attempts themselves.
Most recently, workers at Verizon used a monitoring system to identify and expose discount rate manipulations that artificially reduced pension obligations by $1.8 billion. Their coordinated media campaign forced a partial reversal and created transparency requirements that weren’t previously part of their collective bargaining agreement.
TACTICAL VARIATIONS
For limited-resource implementation, focus solely on the top five manipulation tactics and create simplified detection guides that don’t require financial expertise. Use existing communication channels like union newsletters rather than building new infrastructure.
Groups with technical capabilities can enhance the system with machine learning algorithms that detect subtle pattern changes in financial filings before human analysts would notice them. These systems can scan thousands of filings daily for early warning signs.
In regions with strong labor laws, coordinate the monitoring system with legal clinics that can immediately file injunctions against the most egregious extraction attempts, creating crucial delay that allows for organizing resistance.
COUNTERING OPPOSITION
When companies claim they’re “securing the pension’s future” by transferring obligations to insurance companies, counter with specific data on insurance company failure rates and reduced PBGC protections after such transfers.
If accused of “misunderstanding complex financial realities,” respond by publishing side-by-side analyses from independent actuaries that expose the manipulation of assumptions. The numbers don’t lie even when the executives do.
When facing diversionary PR campaigns about “modernizing retirement benefits,” redirect focus to executive retirement packages which mysteriously never need similar “modernization” – they remain generous defined-benefit plans while workers are pushed into market-risk 401(k)s.
THE NEXT BATTLEFIELD
This isn’t just about saving individual pension plans – it’s about exposing the fundamental theft built into modern capitalism where promises to workers are treated as optional while obligations to shareholders are sacred. Each successful intervention builds toward systemic challenges to the legal structures that enable pension extraction in the first place.
The monitoring systems you build become templates for tracking all forms of financial exploitation, from medical debt collection to tax avoidance. The skills developed transfer directly to broader economic justice campaigns. Your pension defense today becomes community wealth defense tomorrow.
The bastards think they’re safe behind walls of financial complexity. They’re not. Because now you can read their playbook in real time, expose their moves before they’re complete, and throw a wrench in the gears of the extraction machine. The revolution begins with simply watching the money – closely, publicly, and with righteous fury.
RELATED ACTION ITEMS
- Corporate Compensation Tracking System (E5-M2-P3)
- Distributed Corporate Research Networks (D2-S7-L9)
- Community Financial Literacy Workshops (C8-E3-T2)
- Regulatory Capture Documentation Project (R4-G2-P1)
- Whistleblower Support Infrastructure (W3-L1-P5)