Employers may pass on pension plan relief

WASHINGTON, May 11 (UPI) -- A bill to support U.S. employee pension plans would find resistance among employers if it mandated benefit contributions, a trade association director said.

Dena Battle, director of tax policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, said employer contributions to retirement plans have "always been voluntary."

"We work very hard to preserve that," Battle said.

A bill being drafted by Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., would see things differently, Pomeroy's office spokeswoman Sandra Salstrom said.

"Congress will be hesitant to provide pension fund relief without assurance that employers would protect benefits of rank-and-file employees and not divert funding relief to other uses," she said, USA Today reported Monday.

Sixteen companies have said they would stop making contributions to pension plans this year, closing in on the total of 18 that stopped in 2008, consulting firm Watson Wyatt said.

Because of stock market declines, pensions have lost a considerable portion of their value.

Nationally, pension plans were worth only 79 percent of their benefit obligations at the end of 2008. At the end of 2007, pension plans were ahead, worth 109 percent of the benefits they expected to pay out, Watson Wyatt said.