Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers

Hundreds of companies have cut pensions and health benefits for millions of retirees, citing an aging workforce, stock market losses, and rising costs. However, Ellen E. Schultz, an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, reveals that this retirement crisis resulted from deliberate corporate actions rather than external forces alone. A decade ago, most companies had sufficient funds to cover retiree benefits for two generations. By exploiting loopholes, ambiguous regulations, and new accounting rules, companies converted pension plans into sources of profit. Drawing on company data, government filings, internal documents, and confidential memos, Schultz documents decades of widespread deception: companies siphoned billions from pension plans to finance downsizings and asset sales, overstated retiree burdens to justify benefits cuts while inflating executive compensation, hid executive pension liabilities, purchased life insurance on workers as informal executive pension funds, and sued retirees to erode legal protections. These practices extend beyond large corporations to smaller companies, nonprofits, and public pension plans. Employees across all income levels and political backgrounds—from managers to miners and pilots—have been affected. Schultz presents an examination of one of the most critical and least understood crises of the time.