One of the under-reported stories in America is the way in which the corporate thugs in their executive suites come up with new ways to screw people out of their pensions. Normally, what we get when the press covers pensions is the sky-is-falling story, which translates into "workers’ pensions are too generous and should be cut".

    Here is an exception. In today’s New York Times, Mary Williams Walsh–who I have mentioned in the past is an exceptional reporter on pensions–gives us the story of the workers who busted their butts for U.S. Sugar:

Thousands of workers at U.S. Sugar thought they were getting a good deal when the company shelved their pension plan and gave them stock for their retirement instead. They had a heady sense of controlling their own destiny as they became the company’s biggest shareholders, Vic McCorvey, a former farm manager there, said.

“It was always stressed to me, as manager of that 20,000-acre farm, that the better you do, the higher your stock will be and the more retirement you could get,” Mr. McCorvey said. “That’s why I worked six and seven days a week, 14 hours a day,” slogging through wet and buggy cane fields, doing whatever it took.

Now that many U.S. Sugar workers are reaching retirement age, though, the company has been cashing them out of the retirement plan at a much lower price than they could have received. Unknown to them, an outside investor was offering to buy the company — and their shares — for far more. Longtime employees say they have lost out on tens of thousands of dollars each and millions of dollars as a group, while insiders of the company came out ahead.

Some former U.S. Sugar employees have since filed a lawsuit accusing company insiders of cheating them out of money that was rightfully theirs. Throughout, the worker-owners have been shut out of information about the company’s finances and unable to challenge management’s moves or vote because their shares were held through a retirement plan, not directly.

    Workers who are suing the company think there was something underhanded going on here:

The former employees accuse U.S. Sugar insiders — descendants of the industrialist Charles Stewart Mott — of scheming to enrich themselves by buying back workers’ shares on the cheap. They say “the principal actor” is William S. White, the company’s longtime chairman, who is married to Mr. Mott’s granddaughter. They also say he improperly exerted his influence as chairman of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, whose mission is to advance human rights and fight poverty and which holds a big stake in U.S. Sugar.

“They robbed us,” said Loretta Weeks, who worked in U.S. Sugar’s lab, testing sucrose levels in cane juice. “It’s like the last 15 years we were working for nothing.”

U.S. Sugar said in a statement that the lawsuit had no merit and that the company would vigorously contest it, but it did not respond to any specific accusations.

    It is particularly ironic that the Mott Foundation is mixed up in this and I don’t buy this:

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation issued a statement saying that as a major U.S. Sugar shareholder, it was confident that U.S. Sugar’s board had “acted responsibly and within its duties.” It also said the workers’ lawsuit contained accusations that were inaccurate.

    There has always been a lot of hypocrisy among "liberals" when it comes to workers’ rights and unions. Sure, clean up the environment (a good thing), make sure that people aren’t tortured (a good thing) but unions? There always is a little uncomfortable silence in a room full of "liberals" when you try to add that to the mix–too many of them just don’t believe in unions. So, it’s not surprising that the Mott Foundation sounds just like Wal-Mart with its stonewalling statement.

    And while the U.s. Sugar execs do quite well, here’s what happens to the cast-offs:

“I had to go back to work,” said Randy Smith, who retired last year after 25 years as a welder and machinist. He was only 55, but said U.S. Sugar had forced him to retire after declaring him no longer qualified to do his job. The company has been cutting staff aggressively for several years.

Mr. Smith said he cashed out of the retirement plan for about $90,000, but could have received about $53,000 more, if he had had the chance to tender his shares and the company had accepted the outside offers. The extra money would help a lot, he said, because his wife, Sandra, has rheumatoid arthritis, and after he retired, U.S. Sugar canceled its retiree health plan.

Mr. Smith has since found a new job, with health benefits — but it pays $10 an hour, compared with the $23 an hour he once earned at U.S. Sugar.