TV Review: ‘Pension Cookie Jar’ on NBC

It’ll be shocking enough for many people to learn that A&P--a; grocery chain as American as Norman Rockwell--is now owned by a West German company.

But what’s really stunning to discover is that the German company scooped up $250 million from A&P;’s employee pension plan after taking over the chain--legally.

Ready for one more shocker? Hundreds of other pension plans have been similarly affected. Since 1980, $18 billion worth of “surplus” pension funds have met this fate.

NBC examines this disturbing trend in “The Pension Cookie Jar,” a one-hour documentary airing tonight at 10 on Channels 4, 36 and 39. It seems an appropriate subject for executive producer Reuven Frank. The former NBC News president is soon to be a retiree himself: This is his final project for the network. (Please see story on Page 1.)

The A&P; case set a precedent. It becomes apparent that “a monstrous loophole” (as one former lawmaker calls it) exists in U.S. law regarding pensions: A company can grab surplus pension funds, ironically, by terminating the pension plan itself--something that can easily occur when there’s a takeover. Subsequent Reagan Administration “guidelines” have made it even easier to take these funds out of the reach of retirees and place these people instead on paltry insurance-company annuities that feature no rise-in-the-cost-of-living provisions.

The NBC program, narrated by correspondent John Palmer, does a good job of showing us the resulting problems, confusions and fears. However, the hour might have been constructed a bit better: A section on how pension funds are financed and how the surpluses grew (from a trend toward investment that began in the late 1960s) comes well past halfway, a little late for viewers who might be puzzling over these significant points earlier.

But “The Pension Cookie Jar” does make several revelations clear, and among them are things that viewers counting on pension plans had better keep in mind:

--In companies where employees are not protected by a strong union, they cannot count on employer assurances about pensions.

--New laws are needed to nail down whether pension funds are “deferred wages,” as one pension activist here says, or, as an employer retorts, simply another “asset of the company.”