>>>The employER pay for their pension out of the kindness of their heart OR the pension payments were negotiated in the wage package...Part of their wages? That's what it looks like to me.>>>>
When I worked for a company in 1973, there was no union at that time. My employer paid decent wages to a shop full of workers who could barely speak the English language (none were illegal....just very diverse and hard working), including a one as a night shift supervisor. They were also getting a pension plan and healthcare package as well as a year end Christmas bonus given voluntarily by the owner because he saw that to keep good workers, you gave more than the competition might offer (There were also hams for Easter and turkeys for Thanksgiving).....and, yes, those benefits were tax deductions for the company, but those extras were never considered to be part of the wages so were NOT reported on the employees' tax forms at the end of the year.
The union thugs showed up three years later, convinced a number of workers who barely understood the English language, that they should be getting much more......and negotiated the contract after a vote brought the Union in. The employer, at that point, was no longer 'obligated' to cover the employees with pension or healthcare plans since the Union brought in their own versions. Now, not only did I have to start deducting Union dues from the employees' paychecks, but also a portion had to be deducted that went to the Union office itself for their pension and healthcare coverage.....giving the employee much less in their take home pay than what they had ever received from the owner of the company. Their net was very disappointing to the workers, but the contract gave the Unions at least two years' of 'blood money' before they could hold another vote to get rid of them.
The Union, knowing they would be voted out in two years, then made a backdoor deal with the owner.....you keep taking the dues, pensions, and healthcare deductions from the workers, send it to us each month, and we'll disappear today and never come back. The unions had then cancelled every single worker's coverage (I got the cancellation notices to keep on file at that time) and membership.....and slithered away as quickly as they had showed up. For two years, the owner sent the blood money, but the workers had NOTHING to show for it, didn't KNOW they had nothing, and everybody held their breath for two years that nobody would get hurt, no family member would need medical assistance, and that nobody would die.
Once the two years were up, the employees voted the Union back out, the gross wages were kept the same, but the employer never again gave them what they had received for free before. They no longer had a pension or healthcare coverage unless they got it on their own in the private sector. And since the company was actually a three-part process in two different buildings on the same property, two of those extensions were permanently closed down and out of a 40 person shop before, 20 were permanently laid off and gone...and business never came back because the costs had gone up so high during the union takeover and the competition got most of the company's original customers that they had held onto for over 20 years previously. Overtime became non-existent.
Fast forward to today's (began a number of years back) IRS rules.....IF you get those benefits now from your employer as part of your pay package (whether it's forced or voluntary by the employer), those benefits are considered to be part of your wages and are included on your yearly tax form and must be included as 'income' that's taxable on your return.....there are exceptions, obviously, as to whether you actually have to PAY taxes on those benefits dependent upon what your 'earned' income (wages) are and what tax bracket you fall into, but most of the time, you WILL pay taxes on those benefits.
Since this all has bearing on 'the planet imploding' topic....when you combine forced, very expensive healthcare coverage on the employer along with a large minimum wage increase at the same time, there are very few small businesses that will be able to stay afloat and you will be left with a monopoly of only very large companies that can weather that storm. But there will always be consequences and that they ALWAYS affect the very people that liberals claim to want to help and instead actually wind up destroying. Because what many companies years ago and sometimes even today will gladly do voluntarily, on THEIR schedule of what they can afford to do and when, will see that train wreck coming ahead of time and will do whatever they have to to either survive or shut down completely in order to save themselves and what they spent many years trying to build.