Oracle's long-running pension plan class action case: C'mon, judge, reject a jury trial – Big Red

Do not want jury to learn what is fiduciary duty

Of course business does not want to have to answer to the people, they haven't being buying juries.

People might learn that breach-of-fiduciary duty can include not trying to ship work and jobs to places without the many environmental and human right laws people in the West have fought to put in place.

Businesses would not want citizens to learn that fiduciary duty includes "lobbying" to have governments act as businesses want even when it is against the interests of the people and many cultures in the Nations claiming to be democratic.

Trial by jury is a cornerstone of democracy, a check on power. There are very few checks on power available and when given the chance people want to use that power if only to say there are very few checks on power.

Businesses are right to want to remove the role of citizens in government. Allow citizens to have a say and the few will lose money and power to the many.

SOP in the US

I worked for a UK/US company back in the 90's - the US pension plan had everyone contributing to the plan and the company matching the employees contributions but if you left the company before "becoming vested" by making contributions for 6 years then all you got back were your contributions ... minus the management fees. The corporate contributions were then redistributed to the remaining plan members.

Curiously the company had a high staff turnover - unless you were part of the corporate management, your job was reorganized after 4-5 years and you were unemployed - most people got back less than half of your personal pension contributions, some got way less.

Overall, the group said the firm did not act in the best interests of the plan's participants, and prevented those staffers from discovering the breaches of ERISA "through a series of false and misleading communications".

Other than Leisure Suit Larry and a few favoured execs, does Oracle ever act in anyones best interest?

I'm not sure about how it is the UK, but in the U.S. a 401K is not a pension. The employee owns the funds in the 401k and is reponsible for investing them. Oracle is correct in that there most likely not any U.S law regarding the fees for a 401k. How much percentage for fees is too much? It is not clear.

Montana Power

For a real eye-opener look into what happened to employees of Montana Power - which had a real pension system. Fairly new executive staff decided to jump on this new-fangled Internet thingy and sell off all of their boring old utility stuff. Like hydro-electric dams, transmission lines, etc. They then forced all existing employees to convert their pension money to shares of the new company. A very few years later and employees with decades of service were left with absolutely zero when the company was dissolved. See Internet Bubble.

Surprisingly, the top 5 execs all managed to keep their retirement and were given bonuses as the house burnt down. Hmmmm.