The first and primary goal of any benefits re-work.

Think how attractive it'll be to lay people off before the holidays. Oh, the savings.

this is what happens when you allow companies to gut the pension system. Now they going to push for accessing employee 401k funds earlier and matching employee contributed funds only on a lump sum basis.

IBM has been destroying their USA employees since 1995, even as profits continue to be measured in the billions.

This has been done in steps

1. reduce defined benefit pensions
2. take away defined benefit pensions and introduce cash balance pensions and end life time health benefits
3. end pensions and substitute with increased employer contribution to 401K
4. decrease the employer contribution to 401K by delaying funding until the end of the fiscal year

In the meantime they have

1. fired thousands of USA employees every year until their are more IBM employees in India than there are in the USA
2. "reband" USA employees to a lower ranking and decrease their salary
3. etc. etc.

That is why IBM employees have been trying to form a union. Learn more at:

http://www.endicottalliance.org/

And sign the petition to stop this outrageous practice

It was the same in that if you quit or were fired before the EOY they didn't have to pay out. It always seemed like another corporate setup but they had to change back when there were acquired by another company which didn't do that.

When does it end?

Will workers ever be more valuable to US companies again?

I doubt it.

Unless you're a Wall Street Financial Adviser or Banker... or CEO I guess.

The worst - happened during the recession - is when companies do deduct contributions from employees' paychecks but kinda borrow the sum instead of immediately deposit in the saving accounts.

The proper regulatory response is to require lump sum deposits January 1 or the first day of each quarter, then put all costs of adjustments for departing employees onto corporations. That requirement would be fair and keep accountability where it belongs, with the power behind the money.

More to the point - where are regulators on this? - where is government on this? - where is US leadership on this?

From Garn-St Germain in 1982 through NAFTA and Clinton's "modernization" acts Democrats too stupid to understand downstream effects and too morally depraved to admit they didn't know that, enthusiastically supported the destruction of the blue collar middle class in America. The reason for this paragraph is to support my belief IBM faces no serious challenges to doing whatever they want to do because both parties and the supreme court (KELO and Citizens United are both corporatist rulings delightfully playing into popular fantasies there are still two parties) accept legal nonsense like the bloodless corporate "person".