Pensions

California would manage retirement plans for employees of small businesses under a bill proposed by the Assembly's assistant majority leader and backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The program would be administered by the California Public Employees' Retirement System and would be open to employees of businesses without retirement plans. The state would be the first to implement such a program, according to material provided by Assemblyman Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), the bill's author.

Does your job guarantee you a pension for your retirement? Mine doesn't, and if you're like most private-sector workers, your pension plan is either crumbling around you or has been replaced with a 401(k) program, which may or may not receive a helping hand from your employer. Yet many if not most chief executives continue to enjoy lavish pension plans -- on top of their multimillion-dollar pay packages and sundry other perks. How can that be fair? The short answer, of course, is that it isn't.

Boeing Co. said it was changing its retirement program for new, nonunion workers, replacing its traditional pension plan with one that's similar to a 401(k) plan. The new program, to be introduced Jan. 1, won't affect the more than 525,000 current or former employees or retirees already in the company's existing plans, the Chicago airplane manufacturer said.

Orange County supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to place a measure on the November ballot letting voters decide if future pension increases for county government workers should be put to a public vote. If approved by voters as part of the Nov. 4 general election ballot, the measure would amend the county's charter to require that retirement benefit increases for county workers be approved by a majority of voters, with a study of the benefits' cost published in ballot pamphlets.

The board of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power voted this week to give its No. 2 official an extra $152,000 toward his pension, as part of the deal that brought him back to the agency last year. On Wednesday, City Controller Laura Chick called the agreement with Chief Operating Officer Raman Raj "unprecedented" and said she would not cut a check until the City Council takes up the matter and hears why it is necessary. Raj receives an annual salary of $247,000.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez has signed a bill to nationalize nearly $30 billion in private pension funds in response to a financial crisis. Fernandez says that while the U.S. and European Union are stepping in to rescue their banks, Argentina must protect retirees whose stocks and bonds are falling because of the global meltdown. Argentine stocks plunged 11% after word of the announcement leaked. Opponents say the government is scrambling for cash to prop up falling tax revenue.

If there is trouble to be found in county finances, officials have worried it would be in the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement system -- which has some 92,000 employees paying into the program and more than 50,000 benefit recipients. But so far, years of good economic times are keeping trouble low, the system's manager said Tuesday. Since the county's contribution to the pension fund is based on the fiscal year, officials will have to wait until June to determine whether losses from the current global financial crisis will require the county to make up significant shortfalls to the $38-billion investment portfolio.

Orange County's Measure J may be the closest thing to a sure bet on next month's ballot. Voters appear to so strongly favor the idea of requiring their approval of any future increases in county employees' pensions that unions for government workers aren't even campaigning against it. The bigger question is whether Measure J will make much of a difference in pension costs.

With pension funds facing billions of dollars in shortfalls as markets plunge, companies including Ford and Verizon are pushing Congress to suspend portions of a 2-year old law they say could force them to make job cuts as they shift scarce money into ailing retirement pools. The lobbying effort aims to change a 2006 pension reform law as part of any economic stimulus plan in a lame-duck session of Congress that begins next week.

For nearly three decades, working Americans have been part of a huge experiment with their future well-being: Old-fashioned pensions that guaranteed specific retirement benefits have given way to old-age benefits that depend on personal investing in the financial markets.