Those Corporate Pensions Weren't Always So Great

Spend a little time with the U.S. District Court case of Millsap v. McDonnell Douglas Corp., and it may leave you aghast at the heartlessness and mendacity of the people who ran the aircraft manufacturer (since acquired by Boeing Co.) in the 1990s. That certainly seems to have been the effect on Judge Sven Erik Holmes, who in his 2001 ruling in favor of James R. Millsap and the other workers who lost their jobs when McDonnell Douglas shut down its factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1994, fumed that the company had:

The backdrop to the case was that government spending on defense procurement had begun declining in the late 1980s after a boom under President Ronald Reagan. In response, McDonnell Douglas Chief Executive Officer John McDonnell -- son of founder James Smith McDonnell -- launched an effort he dubbed "Hard Reality" in 1990 to cut company expenses by $700 million a year.