Ellen Schultz was an award-winning investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal.  She has written a book that is of great interest to retirees of major corporations, like Verizon Communications.

The book documents how companies plunder and profit from the nest eggs of American workers.  Nell Minow, author of “Watching The Watchers” called the book “… meticulously researched and as gripping as a crime novel.” And we agree.

You can obtain a copy of “Retirement Heist” from a book store like Barnes & Noble or online from Amazon.com for about $16.90 for a hardcover book.

Need to know more?  Ellen reveals how employers:

• Siphon billions of dollars from pension funds to finance downsizings and sell the assets in merger deals.
• Overstate the burden of rank-and-file retiree obligations to justify benefits cuts while simultaneously using the savings to inflate executive pay and pensions.
• Purchase billions of dollars of life insurance on workers and use the policies as informal executive pension funds.  When the insured workers and retirees die, the company collects tax-free death benefits.
• And more!

Also Take a look at the BellTel Retiree Newsletter Winter 2011-12: Retirement Heist review (page 8). SuperMedia retirees lawsuit, they were transferred from Verizon (page 3). HR1322 – a bill to protect retiree earned benefits (page 6).