Howard County Public School System in Maryland considers offering
early retirement incentives a pretty effective cost-saving strategy.
"The problem with
early retirements is that those leaving are not surplus to requirements.
It's no secret that city officials were a bit disappointed by the results of the
early retirement program offered to certain municipal and public school employees a few months ago.
Kookmin Bank, a unit of South Korea's KB Financial Group Inc (105560.SE) (NYSE: KB), has said that approximately 3,000 employees have applied to the management for
early retirement, reports Dow Jones.
A CASH strapped council will have to fork out up to pounds 305,000 from its general reserves to pay-off teachers in
early retirement deals to avoid compulsory redundancies.
A former council leader has called on the authority's external auditors to investigate payments made to the chief executive, who is taking
early retirement. Jeff Jones, who led Bridgend Council until two years ago, says he is appalled at the reported pounds 390,000 payout to chief executive Keri Lewis.
Delta Air Lines is expecting 100 pilots to take
early retirement on 1 December 2004 as a new 32.5% pay cut agreed by the unions comes into force.
For the purpose of this article,
early retirement incentives are defined as temporary incentives or "windows" that alter the normal retirement benefit, typically requiring an amendment to state or local law.
This will reinforce the
early retirement culture that already exists and it will, over the years, incur a huge cost.
John Cunningham, spokesman for the builders union Ucatt, said the jump in
early retirements was an obvious consequence of the decision to privatise council house repairs.
said Monday it plans to cut 150 jobs through an
early retirement program to rationalize operations amid increasing competition.
The government was keen to stress the issue had not arisen during the Labour administration, but had peaked at around 40,000 public sector
early retirements per year under the Tories in the mid-1990s.
