Employee Benefit Plans

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2012

Employee Benefit Plans [Abstract]

Employee Benefit Plans

Note 7 – Employee benefit plans:

We currently expect to record a defined benefit pension credit of $7.6 million during 2012 and we anticipate no cash contributions to our defined benefit pension plans will be required during 2012. The components of our net periodic defined benefit pension credit for the first quarter of 2011 and 2012 are presented in the table below.

	Three months ended March 31,
	2011			2012
	(In thousands)
Service cost	$	931		$	1,168
Interest cost		4,752			4,385
Expected return on plan assets		(13,310	)		(12,202	)
Amortization of accumulated other comprehensive income:
Prior service cost		308			308
Actuarial losses		2,569			4,442
Total pension credit	$	(4,750	)	$	(1,899	)

We currently expect our 2012 other postretirement benefit ("OPEB") credit will be $6.3 million. As allowed under certain of our amended benefit plans, we exercised our right to create supplemental pension benefits in lieu of certain 2012 benefit payments due under one of our OPEB plans. As such, we anticipate contributing an aggregate of $1.2 million to our OPEB plans during 2012. We have the ability to decide whether or not to exercise such rights on a year-by-year basis. If we had not exercised such rights for 2012, our expected OPEB contributions would be $2.9 million higher. The components of our net periodic credit related to OPEB for the first quarter of 2011 and 2012 are presented in the table below.

	Three months ended March 31,
	2011			2012
	(In thousands)
Service cost	$	31		$	40
Interest cost		574			507
Amortization of accumulated other comprehensive income:
Prior service credit		(4,042	)		(4,043	)
Actuarial losses		2,137			1,919
Total OPEB credit	$	(1,300	)	$	(1,577	)

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.