Posts filed under 'Benefits'
April 17th, 2008
The pension system for city workers in Illinois announced this week that it is 100 percent funded at the end of 2007, on a market value basis.
The Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund is the public pension that provides death, disability and retirement benefits to employees who work for cities, villages, libraries, parks, counties and school districts. It has about $24 billion in assets and earned about 8.5 percent last year, according to the IMRF.
There’s a reason why the IMRF wants to toot its own horn about its ability to meet its pension liabilities. In the world of Illinois’ government-funded pensions, IMRF is the exception. It’s separate from the five pension funds controlled by the state legislature. Those retirement systems for teachers, university workers, judges, legislators and other state employees have been shortchanged for years to keep the state budget afloat.
In 2005, lawmakers agreed to put off $4 billion in payments to those funds through 2010, putting them even further in the hole. Last year, the state auditor reported that those state pensions had only about 60 percent of the money needed to pay their expected long-term liabilities.
The moral of the story? You don’t want lawmakers controlling your retirement savings.
March 3rd, 2008
The Department of Labor just proposed new rules for the Family Medical Leave Act, the 15-year-old law that was a centerpiece of President Bill Clinton’s first-term agenda.
The law was created in 1993 to give workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a sick family member or a newborn child. Of course, the law is a bit more complicated in the real world. In the 15 years since its enactment, the law has been through legal battles, including some Supreme Court decisions. The DOL has extensive compliance requirements — the new regulations alone are more than 120 pages long.
The biggest changes to the law concern new entitlements. Under the proposed rules, a worker can take up to 12 weeks off when family members are called to active military duty. Workers can also take up to 26 weeks off in a 12-month period to care for an injured service member.
A local human resource management firm is offering a free breakfast seminar to educate companies about how the proposed rules could affect them.
Samuel J. Castree, senior vice president and counsel at Staff Management Inc., will explain the new rules from 8 to 9 a.m. Wednesday, March 12, at Giovanni’s Restaurant and Convention Center. A continental breakfast will be served beginning at 7:30 a.m.
To reserve a spot, call Barb Heinzeroth at 815-282-3900 or email her.
February 5th, 2008
Lots of companies are making it easier to work while raising kids, according to a survey commissioned by a staffing agency.
More than three in five companies surveyed have made policy changes in the last five years to accommodate working parents, according to OfficeTeam.
The survey was given to 150 randomly selected senior executives at largest 1,000 U.S. companies: 62 percent said their companies had made changes, 33 percent said no and 5 percent weren’t sure.
These kinds of perks — telecommuting, flex time, extended family leave — are fast becoming industry standards as more folks demand a “work-life balance.” It’s a buzzword that’s getting tossed around HR circles a lot lately, but it basically seems to mean that the incoming generation of professionals just won’t work 60 hours a week to accumulate toys. In fact, when people say that this next generation won’t make as much money as its forebears, I sometimes wonder whether that will be as much a sign of economic instability or a conscious choice of individuals.
Here’s an example: I have a old friend right now who quit his stable government job last year and is now traveling through Africa. He just doesn’t see work as an end in itself; he’d rather just work for a while, then do what he wants to do, then come back to work only when finances require it.
October 30th, 2007
Ever hear of the Rule of 72? That’s the mathematical formula that determines how long it will take for a sum to double based on its annual percentage growth. You divide 72 by the percentage rate and find out the number, in years, it will take to double. So if your wages grow by 3 percent each year, then it will take you 24 years to double your salary (72 / 3 = 24). If your stock portfolio grows by 8 percent every year, it will take 9 years to double it (72 / 8 = 9). You get the idea.
A newsletter from the Economic Research Institute, a research firm that does salary surveys for human resources benchmarking, points out an obvious mathematical consequence of this axiom: If health care premiums continue to rise at 10 percent a year and wages rise at 3 percent, it’s only a matter of time before all the money that a company spends on employee compensation will be eaten up by paying for benefits.
Of course, it isn’t certain that employer-sponsored health care costs will rise at the same explosive rates we’ve seen since 2000, but it is certain that the current growth and its impact on employers will make paying for health care the biggest domestic issue in next year’s presidential election.
October 29th, 2007
With November approaching, human resources directors are getting ready for their most special time of year: open enrollment. That’s when we employees sit through presentations about benefits and try to decipher pages information to discern which insurance plan is best for us.
I’ll be writing a story about this annual event sometime next month. But what I want to know is: What kinds of things are changing with your company’s benefits? New consumer-directed health plans? Fewer choices? Atrocious premium increases for employers or employees?
Send me an email at nlegue@rrstar.com or post a comment and let me know what your company is doing.
