In knew this was coming!
Todays Syracuse Post Standard:
http://www.syracuse.com/articles/business/index.ssf?/base/business-7/1172743882213540.xml&coll=1
Cutlery Co. Shorts Pension Fund
Camillus company misses $5M payment; liens placed against assets
Thursday, March 01, 2007
By Tim Knauss
Staff writer
The three dozen remaining employees of Camillus Cutlery Co. punched out for the last time Wednesday afternoon, closing the last chapter of a century-old knife manufacturer that once employed more than 700 people.
The end was extra bitter, a union leader said, because company officials provided no information to employees as they left about their pensions and other matters.
Amid the silence, there was evidence the pensions might be underfunded.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a federal agency that insures pensions, last week placed liens against the assets of Camillus Cutlery, which failed to make nearly $5 million in contributions to its pension plans in November.
The company missed a scheduled contribution of about $1.7 million to its pension plan for salaried employees and a contribution of about $3.2 million to the retirement plan for hourly employees, according to documents filed with the New York Department of State.
The liens allow the pension insurer to return money to the pension plans if there are proceeds from the sale of company assets. But the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. has not assumed control of the pensions, said Jeffrey Speicher, speaking for the pension insurer.
Speicher said he had no further information about the status of the pension funds, which are managed by Camillus Cutlery.
Kathy Westcott, president of United Steelworkers Local 4783 and a 30-year veteran of the cutlery, said she and 15 other hourly workers received no information Wednesday. They do not know when their health insurance expires, whether they will be paid for unused vacations or whom to contact about their pensions.
"We were never given any information from management - no goodbyes, no nothing," she said.
Salaried employees were told their health insurance ended Wednesday and that further information would be
mailed to them, Westcott said.
Managers and owners of the company declined comment.
The company is privately owned by members of the Schwartz and Kaufman families, descendants of former owner Albert Baer, employees say. None of the owners resides locally.
Ed Fletcher, mayor of the village of Camillus, where the cutlery has operated since 1894, said he has tried to reach principals of the company for information but none has returned his calls.
"I've been after them for eight months," he said.
Wednesday, a man who answered the phone at the residence of co-owner John Gilbert Kaufman, of Coral Gables, Fla., said, "I can't talk to you" and hung up when told a reporter was calling.
Tim Knauss can be reached at
tknauss@syracuse.com or 470-3023.
