Employee Benefit Plans

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2011

Employee Benefit Plans [Abstract]

Employee Benefit Plans

Note 8 – Employee benefit plans:

We currently expect to record a defined benefit pension credit of $19.0 million during 2011 and we anticipate no cash contributions to our defined benefit pension plans will be required during 2011. The components of our net periodic defined benefit pension credit for the third quarter and first nine months of 2010 and 2011 are presented in the table below.

	Three months ended September 30,						Nine months ended September 30,
	2010			2011			2010			2011
	(In thousands)
Service cost	$	832		$	931		$	2,496		$	2,793
Interest cost		4,936			4,752			14,809			14,256
Expected return on plan assets		(10,951	)		(13,365	)		(32,853	)		(39,985	)
Amortization of accumulated other comprehensive income:
Prior service cost		302			308			907			924
Actuarial losses		3,670			2,624			11,009			7,762
Total credit	$	(1,211	)	$	(4,750	)	$	(3,632	)	$	(14,250	)

We currently expect our 2011 other postretirement benefit ("OPEB") credit will be $5.2 million. As allowed under certain of our benefit plans, we exercised our right to create supplemental pension benefits in lieu of certain 2011 benefit payments due under one of our OPEB plans. As such, we anticipate contributing an aggregate of only $1.3 million to our OPEB plans during 2011. If we had not exercised such rights for 2011, our expected OPEB contributions would be approximately $2.9 million higher. We have the ability to decide whether or not to exercise such rights on a year-by-year basis. The components of our net periodic credit related to OPEB for the third quarter and first nine months of 2010 and 2011 are presented in the table below.

	Three months ended September 30,						Nine months ended September 30,
	2010			2011			2010			2011
	(In thousands)
Service cost	$	27		$	31		$	82		$	95
Interest cost		611			576			1,831			1,723
Amortization of accumulated other comprehensive income:
Prior service credit		(3,966	)		(4,043	)		(11,898	)		(12,128	)
Actuarial losses		1,986			2,137			5,956			6,412
Total credit	$	(1,342	)	$	(1,299	)	$	(4,029	)	$	(3,898	)

Future variances from assumed actuarial rates, including the rate of return on our defined benefit pension plans' assets, as well as changes in the discount rate used to determine the projected benefit obligation, may result in increases or decreases to pension and postretirement benefit assets and liabilities, pension expense or credits, OPEB expense or credits and pension and OPEB funding requirements in future periods.