The officials seemed to have caved on this one, allowing the NFL to take their pensions away. They should have held out longer for a better deal.
2.
Wag
I just misread the headline, and thought our long, rational nightmare was over.
My bad.
3.
Violet
Wonder how they settled the pension deal.
Cole, are you happy now? Look what you did!
4.
The Dangerman
And Football fans thoughout the land rejoiced; yeah, verily.
The estimates of money that switched hands between the “winners” and the “losers” Monday night was between $150M and $1B (the latter including illegal action). At least one book in Vegas refunded the “losers” money. That couldn’t happen again…
…so no more lockout.
5.
Violet
@Mike: They did? That sucks. They should have held out. Everyone was on their side.
6.
BGinCHI
Amazing that Cole’s ultimatum and withdrawal from the sport (supported by actual photos from his comic book storage room study) got the settlement to happen so fast.
I e-mailed John a half hour ago when I first saw the news so he wouldn’t get the DTs next weekend from not watching the Steelers.
Both sides compromised, but the League got what they wanted, just deferred a few years.
8.
lamh35
Has anyone blamed Obama yet…da socialist
9.
butler
@Violet: From what I’ve read they will have a few more years of pension accrual and will then be switched to a 401K in the future. I suspect that has a bigger effect on future refs than current refs.
10.
Mark S.
Details are a bit sketchy.
I wonder which question will trip up Mitt the most in the debates.
1. Explaining how RomneyCare is teh awesome but ObamaCare is teh suck. Or maybe they both suck, I can’t remember which tact Mitt is taking this week.
2. Why he won’t release his taxes.
3. Why his tax rate should be lower than people making 1/100th as much as him.
4. Afghanistan. Sometimes Mitt agrees with Obama, sometimes he sounds like he would keep us there another ten years.
5. How he will balance the budget with tax cuts offset by deductions he won’t specify.
And there are plenty of others. That’s the problem with having no convictions and no real curiosity about policy. And all the pressure is on Mitt cause he needs a big knockout. Obama barely even needs to show up.
If so, what did the referees get? Both sides were going to have to give up something they went to the wall over. I suspect their pay went up nicely (it’s couch cushion change to the NFL, which, reportedly, is phasing out pensions for 401K’s throughout the organization).
whoopee, just in time for my Browns to go up against the Ravens… I know, being a Brown fan is an exercise in masochism. Oh you can guess what I think of the Ravens.
IIRC, it was pretty much everyone at a company, but the catch at the time was that you had to have 20 consecutive years with the company to collect benefits, which meant that most women got screwed if they had kids since the clock would re-start every time you took a few months off.
The Giant Evil Corporation still has pensions for some union employees (including unionized me). I could also open a company-sponsored 401K if I wanted. Non-union positions no longer get an automatic pension, though I think it’s written into some of the executive contracts.
@butler: So even the refs are going IGMFY to the younger/newer refs? Good to know.
23.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@redshirt: Big 4 accountants got pensions. I think we moved from a defined benefit to a defined contribution plan about fifteen years ago. Between the 401k and the defined contribution plan, I should be able to retire someday. Problably when I’m 85.
24.
angelfoot
@redshirt: I’ve worked for a bank for 18 years. When I started they had a traditional pension plan. I think that was standard for large corporations back then. They started fiddling around with that 3 or 4 years after I started.
25.
Fuck ALL the chickens! (né Studly Pantload, t.e.u.u.)
I thought for sure this wouldn’t get resolved without John McCain running for prez so he could suspend his campaign to address this.
But then, when you’ve lost an anti-union goon like Scott Walker (albeit, >coughcough<), you know you've overplayed your hand.
26.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne: At most publishers, the vesting period was 10 years. But since many people shifted from company to company to get better (advanced) jobs and higher salaries, they rarely got that 10-year vesting done until rather late in their careers, if ever.
Nope. You served all of the necessary time, or you got diddly-squat.
They started changing the rules in the 1980s to make them more fair for women and other people who had to take time off from their careers, which “coincidentally” was around the time companies started fucking around with their pension funds.
ETA: At the Giant Evil Corporation, I’m vested in the pension at 5 years, and it’s prorated after that, so you don’t get the really good pension benefits until 20+ years. But if you do go somewhere else and then come back within X amount of time (not sure what it is), you can “bridge” your pension and basically restart where you left off, not back at the beginning.
30.
suzanne
@Mnemosyne: Speaking of the Giant Evil Corporation, I wanted to ask you….do you know the best place to buy prints/lithographs of some of the more obscure Disney characters? My husband would probably have left me for Uncle Scrooge if he was real.
31.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@redshirt: @redshirt: The plans varied. You also had to reach retirement age, so you could not work ten years and collect the pension. My old defined benefit plan would have paid probably about 1/3 of the average of the final three years salary after ten years. That percentage went up the longer the time of service. I forget if it maxed out at 15 or 20 years. The max was 2/3 average salary. Retirement age to collect was sometime in your 50s. However there were ways to retire earlier under what what was called the rule of 72. (age plus years of service is 72 or greater, one could retire and start drawing the pension).
32.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Which, previous to the unprecedented demonstration of ineptitude on the part of the replacement refs, is why I had a hard time getting on board with a boycott. I’ve been one of the ungrandfathered in a situation like this in the past.
Animation art is tricky, but locally we deal with this guy a lot. My boss has known him for years and he’s very honest. Two of the big auction houses, Bonhams and Profiles in History, have been doing lots of animation art, but their prices will be higher since they’re big auction houses with international clients.
It’s the kind of thing you really have to keep monitoring the market for, but the good news is that the obscure characters are usually obscure because not too many people like them, so the prices aren’t too outrageous. I would steer more towards drawings rather than cels because cels deteriorate if you don’t take care of them just right.
ETA: If you’re not looking for something original, honestly the best way to get things is through the Giant Evil Corporation at the Disney Store website. You can also check eBay and see if anyone put their previous Disney Store purchase up for sale. I got a really nice 1980s Mickey Mouse clock that way.
I have never heard of the continuous part, the companies I know of did not require that.
Yes Redshirt, companies used to have what were know as “defined benefit plans” they took your age at retirement and your years of service to to come up with a monthly payment. This was the norm, won by unions but trickled down to professionals.
In my case, I had 20 years in at Honeywell and its spun off division AlliantTechsystems. If I retired at 65 it would have paid me somewhere around $2500 a month. Not a princely sum but nothing to sneeze at either. But ATK, like most American companies converted to a “defined contribution” plan in which they set aside some pittance every year & you get that if you retire.
In my case 20 years was worth $18,500 – which ATK keeps until I turn 65 (I am not allowed to withdraw it) and they pay me some Federal bond rate (currently around 1% IIRC)
The money for the original plan was stolen to reward corporate plunderers and the current account serves as an extremely low interest loan for the company who can do anything they want with the cash while it is in their hands.
35.
James Hare
I think there’s a reasonable amount of give and take from both sides. The league wanted pensions gone for all officials starting now. Instead pensions are being phased out for new employees. Everything else I’m not sure would be reasonable for the referees to oppose. The provisions about full-time employment and a referee development program are good changes by the NFL. Everybody gets a big raise (almost 25% by my reckoning) and the deal is good for 8 years.
It seems like the result of good-faith negotiating that was given a kick in the pants by reality. The owners finally gave a little and the referees jumped at the chance to get back to work. All in all a pretty good conclusion and one that shows that unions can both secure benefits for their members AND be reasonable.
I still wish the owners hadn’t put stupidly small amounts of money above the integrity of the game. I certainly will wait a good long time before I choose to pay for the “premium” in-stadium experience. Dan Snyder can have the TV money. No more ticket/concessions money from this Redskins fan.
36.
Benno
So if I’m reading the morning coverage right, the union oldheads sold out the new guys…again.
I’m as pro-union as they come. I have been a member of the SEIU, Teamsters, and the AFT. I’ve been in labor fights, organization drives, and negotiating sessions. And never in all my years have any of the older union guys – those with actual influence, I mean – ever said at the table, “you know what, everybody? What about the guys that get hired tomorrow, or next year, or in five? What are we doing for them?” Nope, it’s always “I GOTS MINE, BITCHES! Fuck all y’all after me.”
It makes me sad. What good is this for the health of labor in the long run? It’s like buying a house, running it into dereliction, then complaining that you can’t sell it for as much as you bought it for.
True dat. Try guessing what Ravens fans like me think of the Browns.
Wrong.
When I vacationed in Turkey in 1996, the only bad things anyone had to say about the nation or its people (who were with one exception unfailing gracious & hospitable to me, even when we had no language in common) came from the couple of Greeks I ran across. When asked about the Greeks the Turks generally replied, We don’t hate them, we’re just sorry they still hate us after all this time. I tried to point out that the Greeks are still mad at the West for the sack of Constantinople in AD 1204, so they shouldn’t hold their breath…. But seriously, when you outnumber your opponent 6 to 1 & have kicked his butt every time he’s tried to take land from you by force, it’s pretty easy to be forbearing…
Kinda like that. Many of us followers of the Purple&Black hope your guys get their act together & win something one of these seasons (ideally when Poe’s Crows are in an unavoidable rebuilding year) so you can finally stop whining about Art Modell (RIP). As much as you bitched about the haplessness of the old Browns, one might have thought you’d welcome the chance to start over with new management–it’s not Baltimore’s fault they’ve all been such fuckups. (Oh & BTW we always root for the Orange Helmets when they play the Stealers or Bungles. Feind unseres Feinds usw.)
Here’s hoping for a well-called game with no injuries tonight, & we’ll take our chances on the outcome. Shake on it?
I’m wondering where this puts the replacement refs with regards to future employment. Not all the replacements were horrible, and a lot of them were D1 college refs who had simply hit the glass ceiling with regards to NFL employment. But by crossing the line, have they screwed themselves?
39.
butler
@Tom65: As far as potentially being legit NFL refs someday? Yes. Few D1 refs crossed the line, because they realized that if they did they would never be able to make the jump to the NFL.
Most of them were D2, D3 and NAIA refs. The guy who made the wrong call on the TD on Monday night was actually denied promotion to D1 last year. Several had been fired from the lingerie league for not being good enough.
They’ll still get to be refs at the college level, but I would be totally shocked if any of them ever work an NFL game again.
40.
Wally Ballou
Cool, this means I can stop boycotting the NFL for its labor practices and resume boycotting it for being a tedious, overrated, troglodytic bore of a “sport” that trails only Christianity and conservatism in its unearned cultural dominance in this country.
Sorry, it’s all baseball for me until the Series is over, and then – fingers crossed – on to hockey.
41.
butler
@Violet: Sort of, but looking at the details they got a pretty sweet 401K deal on top of a big pay raise and more job security. The league will make a defined contribution of 18K (increasing to 23K) every year for every single official, in addition to matching funds for any contribution that the refs elect to make for the 401K. Not as good as a defined pension, but a hell of a lot better than a typical 401K.
Given the amount of leverage they actually had I’d say the refs got the best deal possible.
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Mike
The officials seemed to have caved on this one, allowing the NFL to take their pensions away. They should have held out longer for a better deal.
Wag
I just misread the headline, and thought our long, rational nightmare was over.
My bad.
Violet
Wonder how they settled the pension deal.
Cole, are you happy now? Look what you did!
The Dangerman
And Football fans thoughout the land rejoiced; yeah, verily.
The estimates of money that switched hands between the “winners” and the “losers” Monday night was between $150M and $1B (the latter including illegal action). At least one book in Vegas refunded the “losers” money. That couldn’t happen again…
…so no more lockout.
Violet
@Mike: They did? That sucks. They should have held out. Everyone was on their side.
BGinCHI
Amazing that Cole’s ultimatum and withdrawal from the sport (supported by actual photos from his
comic book storage roomstudy) got the settlement to happen so fast.Next up: the Israel-Palestine conflict.
billgerat
@Violet:
I e-mailed John a half hour ago when I first saw the news so he wouldn’t get the DTs next weekend from not watching the Steelers.
Both sides compromised, but the League got what they wanted, just deferred a few years.
lamh35
Has anyone blamed Obama yet…da socialist
butler
@Violet: From what I’ve read they will have a few more years of pension accrual and will then be switched to a 401K in the future. I suspect that has a bigger effect on future refs than current refs.
Mark S.
Details are a bit sketchy.
I wonder which question will trip up Mitt the most in the debates.
1. Explaining how RomneyCare is teh awesome but ObamaCare is teh suck. Or maybe they both suck, I can’t remember which tact Mitt is taking this week.
2. Why he won’t release his taxes.
3. Why his tax rate should be lower than people making 1/100th as much as him.
4. Afghanistan. Sometimes Mitt agrees with Obama, sometimes he sounds like he would keep us there another ten years.
5. How he will balance the budget with tax cuts offset by deductions he won’t specify.
And there are plenty of others. That’s the problem with having no convictions and no real curiosity about policy. And all the pressure is on Mitt cause he needs a big knockout. Obama barely even needs to show up.
The Dangerman
@Mike:
If so, what did the referees get? Both sides were going to have to give up something they went to the wall over. I suspect their pay went up nicely (it’s couch cushion change to the NFL, which, reportedly, is phasing out pensions for 401K’s throughout the organization).
ranger3
1 gt beer n 2eybrd… srs1y… cn tht be fxed arggg!
redshirt
Can someone tell me what professions in the past got pensions? Did everyone? Or just public workers/union members/lucky bastids?
Chuck Butcher
whoopee, just in time for my Browns to go up against the Ravens… I know, being a Brown fan is an exercise in masochism. Oh you can guess what I think of the Ravens.
Chuck Butcher
@redshirt:
WTF? You know anything about professionals?
Chuck Butcher
@redshirt:
WTF? You know anything about professionals?
suzanne
Oh, thank God. Now all of America will snap out of this angry torpor.
1badbaba3
Clearly this illustrates the awesome power of Wisconsin. Once the dynamic duo (gruesome twosome?) of Wanker and Ayn Ryan got involved, shit happened.
Eat that, Obummer.
redshirt
@Chuck Butcher: Apparently, I do not. Professional Assassins?
Mnemosyne
@redshirt:
IIRC, it was pretty much everyone at a company, but the catch at the time was that you had to have 20 consecutive years with the company to collect benefits, which meant that most women got screwed if they had kids since the clock would re-start every time you took a few months off.
The Giant Evil Corporation still has pensions for some union employees (including unionized me). I could also open a company-sponsored 401K if I wanted. Non-union positions no longer get an automatic pension, though I think it’s written into some of the executive contracts.
The Dangerman
@ranger3:
I’m afraid the beer can’t be saved.
Violet
@butler: So even the refs are going IGMFY to the younger/newer refs? Good to know.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@redshirt: Big 4 accountants got pensions. I think we moved from a defined benefit to a defined contribution plan about fifteen years ago. Between the 401k and the defined contribution plan, I should be able to retire someday. Problably when I’m 85.
angelfoot
@redshirt: I’ve worked for a bank for 18 years. When I started they had a traditional pension plan. I think that was standard for large corporations back then. They started fiddling around with that 3 or 4 years after I started.
Fuck ALL the chickens! (né Studly Pantload, t.e.u.u.)
I thought for sure this wouldn’t get resolved without John McCain running for prez so he could suspend his campaign to address this.
But then, when you’ve lost an anti-union goon like Scott Walker (albeit, >coughcough<), you know you've overplayed your hand.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne: At most publishers, the vesting period was 10 years. But since many people shifted from company to company to get better (advanced) jobs and higher salaries, they rarely got that 10-year vesting done until rather late in their careers, if ever.
redshirt
Were pensions prorated? So if it took 20 years for a full pension, at 10 you got half?
Fuck ALL the chickens! (né Studly Pantload, t.e.u.u.)
@Fuck ALL the chickens! (né Studly Pantload, t.e.u.u.): That should have been -cough-Packers-cough- (or some variation thereof).
Fuck *all* the Word Presses.
ETA: Really, WP? Ya had to scroo up this iteration, too?
Mnemosyne
@redshirt:
Nope. You served all of the necessary time, or you got diddly-squat.
They started changing the rules in the 1980s to make them more fair for women and other people who had to take time off from their careers, which “coincidentally” was around the time companies started fucking around with their pension funds.
ETA: At the Giant Evil Corporation, I’m vested in the pension at 5 years, and it’s prorated after that, so you don’t get the really good pension benefits until 20+ years. But if you do go somewhere else and then come back within X amount of time (not sure what it is), you can “bridge” your pension and basically restart where you left off, not back at the beginning.
suzanne
@Mnemosyne: Speaking of the Giant Evil Corporation, I wanted to ask you….do you know the best place to buy prints/lithographs of some of the more obscure Disney characters? My husband would probably have left me for Uncle Scrooge if he was real.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@redshirt: @redshirt: The plans varied. You also had to reach retirement age, so you could not work ten years and collect the pension. My old defined benefit plan would have paid probably about 1/3 of the average of the final three years salary after ten years. That percentage went up the longer the time of service. I forget if it maxed out at 15 or 20 years. The max was 2/3 average salary. Retirement age to collect was sometime in your 50s. However there were ways to retire earlier under what what was called the rule of 72. (age plus years of service is 72 or greater, one could retire and start drawing the pension).
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Violet:
Which, previous to the unprecedented demonstration of ineptitude on the part of the replacement refs, is why I had a hard time getting on board with a boycott. I’ve been one of the ungrandfathered in a situation like this in the past.
Mnemosyne
@suzanne:
Animation art is tricky, but locally we deal with this guy a lot. My boss has known him for years and he’s very honest. Two of the big auction houses, Bonhams and Profiles in History, have been doing lots of animation art, but their prices will be higher since they’re big auction houses with international clients.
It’s the kind of thing you really have to keep monitoring the market for, but the good news is that the obscure characters are usually obscure because not too many people like them, so the prices aren’t too outrageous. I would steer more towards drawings rather than cels because cels deteriorate if you don’t take care of them just right.
ETA: If you’re not looking for something original, honestly the best way to get things is through the Giant Evil Corporation at the Disney Store website. You can also check eBay and see if anyone put their previous Disney Store purchase up for sale. I got a really nice 1980s Mickey Mouse clock that way.
Schlemizel
@Mnemosyne:
I have never heard of the continuous part, the companies I know of did not require that.
Yes Redshirt, companies used to have what were know as “defined benefit plans” they took your age at retirement and your years of service to to come up with a monthly payment. This was the norm, won by unions but trickled down to professionals.
In my case, I had 20 years in at Honeywell and its spun off division AlliantTechsystems. If I retired at 65 it would have paid me somewhere around $2500 a month. Not a princely sum but nothing to sneeze at either. But ATK, like most American companies converted to a “defined contribution” plan in which they set aside some pittance every year & you get that if you retire.
In my case 20 years was worth $18,500 – which ATK keeps until I turn 65 (I am not allowed to withdraw it) and they pay me some Federal bond rate (currently around 1% IIRC)
The money for the original plan was stolen to reward corporate plunderers and the current account serves as an extremely low interest loan for the company who can do anything they want with the cash while it is in their hands.
James Hare
I think there’s a reasonable amount of give and take from both sides. The league wanted pensions gone for all officials starting now. Instead pensions are being phased out for new employees. Everything else I’m not sure would be reasonable for the referees to oppose. The provisions about full-time employment and a referee development program are good changes by the NFL. Everybody gets a big raise (almost 25% by my reckoning) and the deal is good for 8 years.
It seems like the result of good-faith negotiating that was given a kick in the pants by reality. The owners finally gave a little and the referees jumped at the chance to get back to work. All in all a pretty good conclusion and one that shows that unions can both secure benefits for their members AND be reasonable.
I still wish the owners hadn’t put stupidly small amounts of money above the integrity of the game. I certainly will wait a good long time before I choose to pay for the “premium” in-stadium experience. Dan Snyder can have the TV money. No more ticket/concessions money from this Redskins fan.
Benno
So if I’m reading the morning coverage right, the union oldheads sold out the new guys…again.
I’m as pro-union as they come. I have been a member of the SEIU, Teamsters, and the AFT. I’ve been in labor fights, organization drives, and negotiating sessions. And never in all my years have any of the older union guys – those with actual influence, I mean – ever said at the table, “you know what, everybody? What about the guys that get hired tomorrow, or next year, or in five? What are we doing for them?” Nope, it’s always “I GOTS MINE, BITCHES! Fuck all y’all after me.”
It makes me sad. What good is this for the health of labor in the long run? It’s like buying a house, running it into dereliction, then complaining that you can’t sell it for as much as you bought it for.
Uncle Cosmo
@Chuck Butcher:
True dat. Try guessing what Ravens fans like me think of the Browns.
Wrong.
When I vacationed in Turkey in 1996, the only bad things anyone had to say about the nation or its people (who were with one exception unfailing gracious & hospitable to me, even when we had no language in common) came from the couple of Greeks I ran across. When asked about the Greeks the Turks generally replied, We don’t hate them, we’re just sorry they still hate us after all this time. I tried to point out that the Greeks are still mad at the West for the sack of Constantinople in AD 1204, so they shouldn’t hold their breath…. But seriously, when you outnumber your opponent 6 to 1 & have kicked his butt every time he’s tried to take land from you by force, it’s pretty easy to be forbearing…
Kinda like that. Many of us followers of the Purple&Black hope your guys get their act together & win something one of these seasons (ideally when Poe’s Crows are in an unavoidable rebuilding year) so you can finally stop whining about Art Modell (RIP). As much as you bitched about the haplessness of the old Browns, one might have thought you’d welcome the chance to start over with new management–it’s not Baltimore’s fault they’ve all been such fuckups. (Oh & BTW we always root for the Orange Helmets when they play the Stealers or Bungles. Feind unseres Feinds usw.)
Here’s hoping for a well-called game with no injuries tonight, & we’ll take our chances on the outcome. Shake on it?
Tom65
I’m wondering where this puts the replacement refs with regards to future employment. Not all the replacements were horrible, and a lot of them were D1 college refs who had simply hit the glass ceiling with regards to NFL employment. But by crossing the line, have they screwed themselves?
butler
@Tom65: As far as potentially being legit NFL refs someday? Yes. Few D1 refs crossed the line, because they realized that if they did they would never be able to make the jump to the NFL.
Most of them were D2, D3 and NAIA refs. The guy who made the wrong call on the TD on Monday night was actually denied promotion to D1 last year. Several had been fired from the lingerie league for not being good enough.
They’ll still get to be refs at the college level, but I would be totally shocked if any of them ever work an NFL game again.
Wally Ballou
Cool, this means I can stop boycotting the NFL for its labor practices and resume boycotting it for being a tedious, overrated, troglodytic bore of a “sport” that trails only Christianity and conservatism in its unearned cultural dominance in this country.
Sorry, it’s all baseball for me until the Series is over, and then – fingers crossed – on to hockey.
butler
@Violet: Sort of, but looking at the details they got a pretty sweet 401K deal on top of a big pay raise and more job security. The league will make a defined contribution of 18K (increasing to 23K) every year for every single official, in addition to matching funds for any contribution that the refs elect to make for the 401K. Not as good as a defined pension, but a hell of a lot better than a typical 401K.
Given the amount of leverage they actually had I’d say the refs got the best deal possible.