So if the company dumps $500 million into the plan how do they catagorize that? Where does that figure show up? According to what you are saying their costs for a given year are only what they pay out to retirees for the year, not what they pay in, despite the fact that most of what was paid out would be from funds that were set aside years ago and while certain rules may apply for tax reporting purposes they dont apply when claims are made such as "AA's labor costs are $600 millionor $800 million more than their competitors". In other words they can make the numbers say pretty much whatever they want them to say as long as they dont mislead investors into thinkng they are in better shape than they are.
Last year I paid AA around $3000 for medical benefits, , so if AA claims they "paid out" $2000 they in fact netted $1000. When they cite that they paid out X millions in benefits their actual costs were much, much less because they are offset by fees levied against employees for the coverage.
One thing that seems to be clear is that despite the fact that everyone says they use the same source for the Data everyone has different numbers. Kind of squashes the arguement that accurate comparasions can be made from those sources when everyone ends up with different figures on basic costs such as labor costs. Like I said the SEC helps companies retain secrecy and at least as far as SEC filings are really more about letting investers know how much liability the firm is exposed to, and that liability is the primary reason for the attacks on DB pensions and not whether or not the plans provide an operational impediment to the profitability of the firm.
By the way you are slipping. I never said that outsourcing doesnt lower labor costs, I never denied that it does, but outsourcing doesnt eliminate the cost of getting the work done, it shifts it somewhere else and nobody has proven that it lowers costs, note the absence of the word Labor. Costs and labor costs are two different things.
