Profit Sharing
Some numbers on profit sharing sharing:
22 YEAR AVERAGE 10.08%
TRAILING 10 YEAR AVG. 9.27%
PRESENT CONTRACT
YRS. 1994 - 2004 11.15%
All employees are vested in the profit sharing after 5 years with the company. For example, hired in Oct 99, employee is vested come 1 Jan 05. Leave before that, no money, leave after that you can roll the money over into another tax deferred account or take a withdrawal with a penalty. Firs time you can touch the money is at 59 1/2. My mistake on the 55 yrs of age.
Stock options are a long discussion & quite honestly for anyone hired after Jan '02, they will be of no value since the price won't be established until Jan '03. Not trying to dodge the bullet but options are great things if there is a large amount of time until you have to exercise them. In the case for many of us & anyone hired this yr to the end of the last option distribution, Sept '03, the options are small change. I do expect our pay rates to go up with a new contract to hopefully industry average with more stock options added to the pie to get our pilots to industry leading. Some folks like the options (higher seniority), others (low seniority) don't. We'll see what happens. Hope this helps,
RW
there is a 401K matching from the company of 7.3% of income (up to the IRS limit) but no money is contributed unless the employee contributes some of his own money. To max out the company matching therefore you have to give up 7.3% of monthly salary to max out the company benefit. Other airlines don't have this matching requirement. Various mutual funds or company stock you can put this in. Profit sharing is the same thing, various funds or company stock.