Rant: Big Business Bs

[joelhookah]

[size=3]This is my rant. I hate bullshit, read at your own discretion. [/size]

[b] [size=3]The news just did a piece about an investment firm and their 401k program. Due to "the economy" the firm stopped doing a company match, but now the employees can be thankful because they just announced that they will once again start matching the employees contributions. Well I call bullshit on this one. They stopped matching the contributions because they can. Because the economy is where it is, there are ten qualified people just waiting to replace the first person who makes a peep about 401k contributions. And the new person will get hired on and never be eligible for a company match anyway, so it's a win win for the company. And the reason they decided to start matching the contributions again? Well how would it look if they cut the company match and then in January started cutting those big bonus checks for the CEO and others running the show? It would look like shit. So magically, here in December, "Surprise! We are going to match your contributions again!" Fuck big business using bullshit excuses to cop out and cut corners, saving them money while costing the ones who do all the work.[/size][/b]

[Rani]

I'm no fan of big, or should I say "global" business. But in this case, it's entirely possible for me to come down on the side of the business. Cutting the 401k match is one way to cut the company expenditures while still retaining employees. You can't judge it by assuming it's just a blanket action. It depends on the industry, how many employees they had/retained, etc., the total amount of the matching contributions, as opposed to cutting salaries, and so on. And we don't know if the employees were offered options. There have been times in the past when a company owner has come to our entire organization and said, "Look.... I have to cut expenditures, and these are the options." In that particular case we gave up bonuses and a lot of other benefits because it kept every single person employed. So before I would said they did a bad thing, I'd want to know more details about the company itself.

'Rani

[joelhookah]

I couldn't disagree more. As a former employee of Bank of America, I have witnessed time and again where the economy excuse was used to maximize profits at the cost of the lower employees. All this took place in a year where we made exceptional profits despite having to pay out on very large lawsuits.

[TheScotsman]

Go read up on joe bite-me's shameless promotion of the infamous “Guaranteed Retirement Account” (GRA) authored by Theresa Guilarducci.

Doesn't matter either way. You gotta be nuts to be putting money into an account the gov't is already eyeballing for use to, how did they put it? er, more "fairly distribute" retirement income. And to bail out union pensions. You aren't getting to keep that 401 anyway.


B of A is run by crooks, but they are just the little fish in the tank of sharks looking to turn your account into a skeleton of it's former self...