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Slashed health care coverage and frozen wages were the hallmark of the recession -- at least for those who held onto their jobs. Yet even though the economy has improved, many of the employee benefits that were once guarantees are starting to look like a thing of the past.

Over the past five years, 40% of working adults have seen their employer-sponsored benefits reduced or eliminated entirely, according to a survey by the National Endowment for Financial Education, or NEFE.

Harris Interactive conducted the survey on behalf of the nonprofit, polling 2,210 adults in the U.S. -- more than half of whom were employed.

An overwhelming majority, or 72%, of those who saw their benefits cut said their health insurance coverage was hardest hit, NEFE said. As employers cut back, employees shouldered more costs, including higher deductibles and co-pays, as well as more expensive premiums.

This year, workers' out-of-pocket costs rose 5.8% to an average of $3,470 for a typical family of four, according to data compiled by independent actuarial and health care consulting firm Milliman Inc.

By 2017, cost and competitive pressures are expected to prompt more than 50% of large Fortune 1000 organizations toward dropping health care coverage altogether, according to a recent study by the Corporate Executive Board, a Washington, D.C.-based research firm.

Once those businesses have a viable alternative -- such as the insurance exchanges that enable workers to purchase their own insurance that are laid out in the Affordable Care Act -- then there are not a lot of reasons for them to continue to offer health care coverage, said Brian Kropp, a managing director at Corporate Executive Board.

"The vast majority of organizations are better off taking those resources and offering employees something else, like more money or paid time off. You get a much bigger bang for your buck," Kropp said.

But currently, most employees aren't getting those trade-offs. More than two out of every five workers, or 41%, have had their pay raises suspended and another 23% said their bosses stopped giving performance bonuses, NEFE's survey found.

Not only are employees making less but saving for retirement and other expenses has gotten harder, too. One quarter, or 25%, of those surveyed by NEFE said their company cut back on their 401(k) match and 13% said their employer stopped matching altogether.

Gordon Bowen, a professor at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va., said his employer used to make a contribution to his retirement savings account that was equal to 7.5% of his income, but the college temporarily suspended that benefit in 2007.

Around the same time, the private college froze his wages. Since then, Bowen says his retirement contribution has been reinstated at 3% of his annual income but he hasn't received a raise in 5 years.

Three-quarters of the U.S. employers that suspended their 401(k) plan matching contributions during the economic downturn have since restored them, according to an analysis of 260 organizations by benefits consultant Towers Watson. However, many of them are now offering benefits at a lower rate.
Bowen's wife Linda, a public school teacher in Virginia has had a similar experience. "The state has also chosen to use this climate of belt tightening to scale back all kinds of benefits," Bowen said.

"It's been a good life, but it's being corroded by reckless disregard of the implications of year after year of wages freezes, not just for me but for my wife," said Bowen.

"That's a sobering thing to deal with," said Ted Beck, NEFE's president and CEO. "But there's a tough love message in there, [American households] have to figure out how to do it on what they have." http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/31/pf/employee-benefits/?npt=NP1 love" my ass, in reality it's "fuck you"! Meanwhile,

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The final figures show that the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009. The earlier study had put the median pay at a none-too-shabby $9.6 million, up 12 percent.

Despite the soft economy, weak home prices and persistently high unemployment, some top executives are already making more than they were before the economy soured.

Pay skyrocketed last year because many companies brought back cash bonuses, says Aaron Boyd, head of research at Equilar. Cash bonuses, as opposed to those awarded in stock options, jumped by an astounding 38 percent, the final numbers show.

According to a report released by GovernanceMetrics in June, the good times for chief executives just keep getting better. Many executives received stock options that were granted in 2008 and 2009, when the stock market was sinking.

Now that the market has recovered from its lows of the financial crisis, many executives are sitting on windfall profits, at least on paper. In addition, cash bonuses for the highest-paid C.E.O.’s are at three times prerecession levels, the report said.

And it’s not as if most workers are getting fat raises. The average American worker was taking home $752 a week in late 2010, up a mere 0.5 percent from a year earlier. After inflation, workers were actually making less.

Resurgent executive pay has some corporate watchdogs worried that companies have already forgotten the lessons of the bust. Boards have promised to tie executive pay to company success, but by some measures pay is rising faster than performance. The median pay raise for chief executives last year — 23 percent — was roughly in line with the increase in net corporate profits. But it far exceeded the median gain in shareholders’ total return, which was 16 percent, as well as the median gain in revenue, which was 7 percent. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/business/03pay.html?pagewanted=all

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In other words, CEO's are getting raises on already-insane pay, while regular Americans are essentially getting pay CUTS! Screw the working man, while making the already-rich ENORMOUSLY richer! Heaven help our country.

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Internet-savvy 'Firefly' fans fly back into the fight

Last week, Fillion, who now stars in ABC's "Castle," told Entertainment Weekly he'd love to play Mal again. Then, he ratcheted things up a notch.

"If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to "Firefly," make it on my own, and distribute it on the internet," Fillion told EW, a CNN.com partner.

Then, some possibly surprising online reactions started rolling in.

The next day, former "Firefly" writer Jose Molina wrote on Twitter: "For what it's worth, I've told him I'd drop what I was doing and follow."

Then, Jane Espenson, who wrote an episode, chimed in: "I'm there, if needed," she tweeted.

Jewel Staite, who played ace mechanic Kaylee on the show, had a simple answer when a Twitter follower asked if she'd be on board: "Is the Pope Catholic?"

That was more than enough for fans (whose "Browncoat" nickname, by the way, comes from the Western-style dusters worn by Fillion and others on the show).

A website, "Help Nathan Buy Firefly," popped up, under the title "Let's get the Captain his money."

The goal? To set up a means of collecting pledges that would turn into donations if a revived "Firefly" looks like it could become a reality.

The pledge system hadn't been officially created as of Tuesday, but fans were already writing in the site's comment section that they're willing to pony up.

In five days, the site's Facebook group had picked up more than 33,000 members -- about 10,000 of them in the past 24 hours.

The two creators of the site are remaining publicly anonymous for now. In an email to CNN (which came from an address linked to the site and was mentioned on the group's Facebook page), they said they work in the nonprofit field but "have no credentials to speak of" in the TV/film industry or "Firefly" community. http://articles.cnn.com/2011-02-23/tech/bring.back.firefly_1_firefly-j
ewel-staite-malcolm-reynolds?_s=PM:TECH 2011:

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How Firefly Fans Made One University's Campus Safe For Free Speech

Back in September, we wrote about a situation at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, where campus police couldn't be bothered to actually read the text on a post put up by professor James Miller, which referenced a quote in the pilot episode of Firefly, with a picture of Nathan Fillion, the actor who played the character who spoke the line.

The quote was one about fairness, but the campus police interpreted it as a threat, took it down, and threatened the professor. In response, Miller put up a second poster, mocking the takedown of the first poster:

Once again, the university police got involved, taking down the poster and claiming that it "depicts violence and mentions violence and death." And saying that the "campus threat assessment team" had determined that the poster would "cause a material and/or substantial disruption of school activities and/or be constituted as a threat." That seems like an interesting (i.e., "wrong") interpretation of the First Amendment (remember, this is a state school), and the group FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) got involved, sending a letter on behalf of Miller. Amazingly, the University doubled down on this form of censorship, standing by the original takedowns.

We hadn't followed the story since then, but thanks to JJ for passing along that FIRE recently put up a video detailing the full story, with an appearance by Neil Gaiman, whose tweets about the story first alerted us (and, as it turns out, tons of others) to the story.

As he notes, you should never, ever upset science fiction fans who feel their favorite show has been cancelled in an untimely way.

Of course, as FIRE's director notes, this story ended up with the University backing down, but only because of the widespread outrage from Firefly fans. It's too bad that these kinds of issues often only get attention when they have a hook like that. Hopefully more people recognize that free speech issues are free speech issues even if they don't involve a particular TV show...Video at http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111227/15534717208/how-firefly-fans
-made-one-universitys-campus-safe-free-speech.shtml Film Raises Over $113,000 for Charity Through Social Media

The final tally for money raised by the project, Browncoats: Redemption, was announced at the project’s wrap party held at Dragon*Con in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend. At last count, the combined donations to each of the five charities supported by the project total well over $113,000. DVDs and Blu-Rays, used as fundraising tools for the charities involved, were sold online through social media promotion and in person at conventions, beginning when the movie premiered at Dragon*Con in 2010. http://browncoatsmovie.com/ ALL the above: I HIGHLY resent your conspiracy theory that all these people are being duped into some kind of state-sponsored "conspiracy"...or whatever your fevered brain seems to be trying to say, or that Haken doesn't exist. If you think some government geek is sitting around reading our shit, you're crazier than PN; I've had problems with the site, e-mailed or posted Haken about them, he's responded and a couple of case changed things on the site. Haken exists, and gawd bless him for continuing to keep this site alive for us...many, many such sites have eventually died. They DID try to kill the Firefly forum from the original Fox Firefly site; the Browncoats so flooded one of their other forums (I forget which one) that they reopened it, last I heard.

Firefly was a minor miracle; Serenity was an even bigger one; we are alive and well and won't stop flying any time soon.

Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it!