NEW YORK, Nov 30 (Reuters) – Millions of Americans remember US Airways pilot Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III. In 2009, he became an instant hero for saving 155 lives by landing on New York City’s Hudson River when his aircraft lost power after it was struck by birds shortly after taking off.

But few know that – like thousands of other airline employees – Sullenberger was struggling financially at the time because two US Airways bankruptcies had derailed his pension and slashed his salary 40 percent.

“We had saved some money, but not enough to make up for everything we were losing,” says Sullenberger, who has since become a successful author, consultant and volunteer.

His fellow pilots were mostly in their late 40s or 50s, he says. “We didn’t have a lot of time to regain what we had lost.”

Soon, roughly 130,000 workers – along with retirees – at American Airlines and parent AMR Corp could face similar difficulties. On Tuesday, American became the last major domestic airline to file for bankruptcy protection. The airline has not announced yet whether it plans to unload its pension, but the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp estimated on Tuesday that its four plans are $10 billion underfunded.

American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith says a Chapter 11 reorganization “does not necessarily mean that” a company will terminate its four plans, which collectively have about $8.3 billion in assets, according to the PBGC.

“American’s pension and retiree medical plans are very expensive. The company spends more on them than our competitors,” he says. “These costs and many other factors are considerations when deciding to continue these benefits.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – It’s not like the people in Fort Wayne, Indiana aren’t sympathetic with America’s unemployed. It’s just that they’re not seeing as many of them as the rest of us.

While most of the country is saddled with stubbornly high unemployment, numerous new construction projects and thousands of new jobs have made this Midwestern city of nearly 250,000 a pocket of relative prosperity.

“We’ve gotten not only a lot of jobs, but a lot of good-paying jobs,” says Andi Udris, president of the Fort Wayne-Allen County Economic Development Alliance, “Sometimes you get lucky.”

Fort Wayne added 8,000 jobs in the past year, almost half of the 18,000 it lost during the recession, including many in manufacturing. Its jobless rate has dropped by 1.3 percentage points to 8.1 percent.

That all helped to propel it to the top of the Fiscal Times’ 10 Best Places to Find a Job list.

And it’s not alone. There are other places with help wanted signs offering jobs with high wages. They’re places like Wichita, Kansas; Worcester, Massachusetts and Twin Falls, Idaho.

That’s particularly good news for the 5.9 million long-term unemployed Americans (those out of work for at least 27 weeks and still actively looking for a job), many of whom may soon lose their unemployment benefits.

NEW YORK, Nov 21 (Reuters) – It’s not like the people in Fort Wayne, Indiana aren’t sympathetic with America’s unemployed. It’s just that they’re not seeing as many of them as the rest of us.

While most of the country is saddled with stubbornly high unemployment, numerous new construction projects and thousands of new jobs have made this Midwestern city of nearly 250,000 a pocket of relative prosperity.

“We’ve gotten not only a lot of jobs, but a lot of good-paying jobs,” says Andi Udris, president of the Fort Wayne-Allen County Economic Development Alliance, “Sometimes you get lucky.”

Fort Wayne added 8,000 jobs in the past year, almost half of the 18,000 it lost during the recession, including many in manufacturing. Its jobless rate has dropped by 1.3 percentage points to 8.1 percent.

That all helped to propel it to the top of the Fiscal Times’ 10 Best Places to Find a Job list.

And it’s not alone. There are other places with help wanted signs offering jobs with high wages. They’re places like Wichita, Kansas; Worcester, Massachusetts and Twin Falls, Idaho.

That’s particularly good news for the 5.9 million long-term unemployed Americans (those out of work for at least 27 weeks and still actively looking for a job), many of whom may soon lose their unemployment benefits.

Nov 3 (Reuters) – The big banks may have dropped the debit card fees, but the credit unions are the ones picking up the business.

Long touted by consumer groups as a more consumer-friendly option than large commercial banks, the nation’s not-for-profit credit unions saw a significant jump in new members and deposits last month as momentum in the Occupation Wall Street campaign has increased, and many of the big banks rescinded, debit card fees.

The credit unions pulled in some 650,000 new customers since Sept. 29, when Bank of America announced it would add a $5-a-month debit card fee, an industry trade group reported. Deposits from new customers surged to $4.5 billion, according to the survey released Thursday of 5,000 credit unions by the Credit Union National Association.

The deposits from these new customers were about as much as credit unions’ get from their entire base of existing customers in a typical month.

Credit unions are chartered as not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members. Like other financial institutions, they are regulated and deposits of up to $250,000 are federally insured. There are almost 7,800 credit unions in the United States.

A Bank of America (BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) spokesperson said the bank’s deposit data is not current and won’t be available until January. So there are no figures to show whether it lost accounts.

THE LOYALTY PROBLEM

By Jilian Mincer

(Reuters) – Like a lot of companies, Veridian Credit Union wants its employees to be healthier. In January, the Waterloo, Iowa-company rolled out a wellness program and voluntary screenings.

It also gave workers a mandate – quit smoking, curb obesity, or you’ll be paying higher healthcare costs in 2013. It doesn’t yet know by how much, but one thing’s for certain – the unhealthy will pay more.

The credit union, which has more than 500 employees, is not alone.

In recent years, a growing number of companies have been encouraging workers to voluntarily improve their health to control escalating insurance costs. And while workers mostly like to see an employer offer smoking cessation classes and weight loss programs, too few are signing up or showing signs of improvement.

So now more employers are trying a different strategy – they’re replacing the carrot with a stick and raising costs for workers who can’t seem to lower their cholesterol or tackle obesity. They’re also coming down hard on smokers. For example, discount store giant Wal-Mart (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) says that starting in 2012 it will charge tobacco users higher premiums but also offer free smoking cessation programs.

Tobacco users consume about 25 percent more healthcare services than non-tobacco users, says Greg Rossiter, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, which insures more than 1 million people, including family members. “The decisions aren’t easy, but we need to balance costs and provide quality coverage.”

By Jilian Mincer

(Reuters) – Like a lot of companies, Veridian Credit Union wants its employees to be healthier. In January, the Waterloo, Iowa-company rolled out a wellness program and voluntary screenings.

It also gave workers a mandate – quit smoking, curb obesity, or you’ll be paying higher healthcare costs in 2013. It doesn’t yet know by how much, but one thing’s for certain – the unhealthy will pay more.

The credit union, which has more than 500 employees, is not alone.

In recent years, a growing number of companies have been encouraging workers to voluntarily improve their health to control escalating insurance costs. And while workers mostly like to see an employer offer smoking cessation classes and weight loss programs, too few are signing up or showing signs of improvement.

So now more employers are trying a different strategy – they’re replacing the carrot with a stick and raising costs for workers who can’t seem to lower their cholesterol or tackle obesity. They’re also coming down hard on smokers. For example, discount store giant Wal-Mart says that starting in 2012 it will charge tobacco users higher premiums but also offer free smoking cessation programs.

Tobacco users consume about 25 percent more healthcare services than non-tobacco users, says Greg Rossiter, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, which insures more than 1 million people, including family members. “The decisions aren’t easy, but we need to balance costs and provide quality coverage.”

Oct 30 (Reuters) – Like a lot of companies, Veridian Credit Union wants its employees to be healthier. In January, the Waterloo, Iowa-company rolled out a wellness program and voluntary screenings.

It also gave workers a mandate – quit smoking, curb obesity, or you’ll be paying higher healthcare costs in 2013. It doesn’t yet know by how much, but one thing’s for certain - the unhealthy will pay more.

The credit union, which has more than 500 employees, is not alone.

In recent years, a growing number of companies have been encouraging workers to voluntarily improve their health to control escalating insurance costs. And while workers mostly like to see an employer offer smoking cessation classes and weight loss programs, too few are signing up or showing signs of improvement.

So now more employers are trying a different strategy - they’re replacing the carrot with a stick and raising costs for workers who can’t seem to lower their cholesterol or tackle obesity. They’re also coming down hard on smokers. For example, discount store giant Wal-Mart (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) says that starting in 2012 it will charge tobacco users higher premiums but also offer free smoking cessation programs.

Tobacco users consume about 25 percent more healthcare services than non-tobacco users, says Greg Rossiter, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, which insures more than 1 million people, including family members. “The decisions aren’t easy, but we need to balance costs and provide quality coverage.”

For decades, workers – especially with large employers - have taken many health benefits for granted and until the past few years hardly noticed the price increases.

By Phil Wahba and Jilian Mincer

(Reuters) – New York luxury store owners and real estate agents are wondering whether they have to brace for some of Wall Street’s pain.

With others likely to follow Goldman Sachs’ lead and slash compensation, Wall Street dealmakers, traders and other staff at banks and funds could cut back this holiday season.

That, along with the threat of layoffs, might spell shorter lines at luxury shops like Saks Fifth Avenue and will make finance industry types think twice before plunking down $200,000 to reserve a three-month summer rental for 2012.

“People do remember 2008,” says Michael Pomerantz, president of financial advisers Pomerantz Financial Associates, which has Wall Street clients. “There’s still so much fear, even among older traders and financial professionals, they’re scared they’ll get laid off.”

When the financial markets seized up in 2008, luxury businesses got slammed. Saks, for example, saw double-digit sales declines and had to resort to deep discounts to clear inventory from its shelves.

Given that the New York area accounts for nearly a third of the nation’s entire annual $65 billion luxury retail market, any blows here will have reverberations for the U.S. as a whole.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Deteriorating conditions in the pension system are jeopardizing the lump sum payouts workers count on, and pushing some workers to retire ahead of schedule.

Stock market losses began dragging down pension assets a few years ago, but the current near-zero interest rates – intended to spur the American economy – have worsened the problem and created the largest gap in assets and liabilities since the end of World War II. “While low interest rates help people borrow money, they dramatically shoot up the pension obligations of plans,” says Rebecca Davis, an attorney at the Pension Rights Center in Washington.

And the problem isn’t unique to the U.S. A new study from consulting giant Mercer says the problem is global in scope. The sustainability of pensions in other countries is also at risk, according to the 2011 Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index released on Tuesday.

That’s the kind of uncertainty prompted American Airlines Captain Rod Carlone to leave the work force last month, much sooner than he had expected. Carlone says he did not want to risk missing out on a lump sum payment if the American Airlines Pensions Inc. Pilot Retirement Benefit Program Fixed Income Plan (the pilot pension plan) was underfunded. After almost 24 years at American, he flew his last flight on September 30 from Dallas to Los Angeles.

“I can’t afford at almost 62 a financial setback I could not recover from,” Carlone says. “I live in Las Vegas, and this is one wager I didn’t want to make.”

Concerns about the pension have resurfaced in recent months, but the airline says participants shouldn’t worry. “We have a history of meeting our pension obligations,” says Sean Collins, director of financial communications at American Airlines.

How bad is the cash crunch for companies? The aggregate deficit of pension plans among S&P 1500 companies climbed by $134 billion in September to $512 billion, according to Mercer. The funded status of the 100 largest corporate pensions dropped by $124 billion during September, according to Milliman, an actuarial and accounting firm. Looking at it another way, the funded ratio of companies in the index slipped to less than 73 percent from almost 80 percent at the end of August.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – While workers can’t do much when a stock market sell-off hits their 401(k) balances, they can speak up about poor investment choices and unreasonable plan fees. Now, more are taking those complaints to the courts as they bring lawsuits against employers they believe have allowed poorly-performing and overly-expensive funds into their retirement plans.

The most recent 401(k) fee lawsuit was filed last week against Ameriprise Financial Inc, which bills itself as “America’s leader in financial planning.” The suit, which was brought on behalf of several employees and is seeking class action status, alleges the financial firm pushed workers into expensive and untested proprietary funds at a cost the lawyers for the employees say is more than $20 million.

It’s one of some three dozen lawsuits filed in recent years in the ongoing tussle over 401(k) costs. Experts don’t expect those cases – or high 401(k) fees – to disappear anytime soon, even though a rule scheduled to kick in by mid-2012 should give workers much more insight into the fees built into their plans.

“They put people into their products, and they were not vetted and were excessively expensive,” Jerome Schlichter, who is representing the Ameriprise employees, told Reuters in an interview. He says the company was “self dealing.”

Donald E. Froude, president of the Ameripise’s Personal Advisors Group, defended his firm on Monday, while speaking at the Reuters Global Wealth Management Summit. “We feel we’ve acted appropriately,” he said, adding, “This law firm has done several other cases.”

Schlicter’s firm, Schlichter, Bogard & Denton, has filed many of the class action suits in the last five years. A number of those cases have been thrown out or remain in litigation, but others – notably those against Caterpillar Inc., and General Dynamics Corp. – resulted in multimillion dollar settlements for thousands of employees. “These lawsuits have really helped shine a light on the fact that there are very large plans that have fees that are too high,” said Mike Alfred of Brightscope, a firm which monitors and grades 401(k) plans.

In recent years, the down market has focused greater attention on 401(k) fees, many of which are very difficult for workers and even employers to ferret out. A survey released in April by AARP found that more than seven in 10 of plan participants incorrectly reported that they did not pay any fees.