I watch in horror as company after company, and now city after city, declare war on loyal long-term employees who have dedicated their lives to serving the company, the city or its people, and call it an “entitlement problem” (“The Lessons Learned from Detroit’s Bankruptcy,” 8/5/13 edition).
When as a condition of employment, an organization agrees to put money into a defined-benefit pension account on behalf of its employees, and then misspends the money, invests it in a foolhardy fashion, or “borrows against it” until the organization can no longer meet its obligations, that’s not an entitlement problem, that’s an integrity problem. And it should be the organization’s problem to resolve, burden to bear, or loss to suffer, not the employees’.
William VanSickle, Gainesville, FL