14. EMPLOYEE RETIREMENT PLANS

Defined Benefit Pension and OPEB Welfare Plans

The Company sponsors and contributes to pension plans (“Pension Plans”) and other post-retirement employment benefit (“OPEB”) plans covering many of our United States (“U.S.”) employees, in whole or in part based on meeting certain eligibility criteria. In addition, the Company’s subsidiaries have various Pension Plans and other forms of post-retirement arrangements outside the U.S., namely in Canada and Taiwan.

The Pension Plans provide benefits to certain employees and retirees and are closed to new hires. Effective January 31, 2014, amendments to the Pension Plans for U.S. non-bargained employees froze all future benefit accruals for non-bargained employees who were not already frozen.

The OPEB plans are unfunded and provide medical and life insurance benefits for certain employees and their dependents.

The U.S. nonqualified pension plan was remeasured on February 29, 2016 following the February 2016 workforce reduction implemented as part of our cost savings initiatives. This event reduced the plan’s benefit obligation by $0.7 million and was recognized fully through a $0.7 million adjustment to Other Comprehensive Income. The plan’s net periodic benefit cost for 2016 has been adjusted to reflect the remeasurement due to the resulting curtailment event.

In the third quarter of 2015, we changed the method we use to estimate the service and interest components of net periodic benefit cost for U.S. pension and other postretirement benefits. This new estimation approach discounts the individual expected cash flows underlying the service cost and interest cost using the applicable spot rates derived from the yield curve used to discount the cash flows used to measure the benefit obligation. Historically, we estimated these service and interest cost components utilizing a single weighted-average discount rate derived from the yield curve used to measure the benefit obligation at the beginning of the period.

We made this change to provide a more precise measurement of service and interest costs by improving the correlation between projected benefit cash flows to the corresponding spot yield curve rates. We have accounted for this change as a change in accounting estimate that is inseparable from a change in accounting principle and accordingly have accounted for it prospectively. This change in accounting estimate was first reflected in benefit cost for the third quarter of 2015 for the OPEB plans and in 2016 for the Pension Plans.

The following table details the pension and postretirement benefit income, for the three month periods ended March 31, 2016 and 2015:


	Pension Benefits Three Months Ended March 31,				OPEB Three Months Ended March 31,
*(In millions)*	2016		2015		2016		2015
Components of net periodic benefit income:
Interest cost	$	(6.5)	$	(7.7)	$	(0.5)	$	(1.1)
Service cost		(0.9)		(1.1)		(0.2)		(0.2)
Expected return on assets		10.5		11.4		-		-
Amortization of:
Prior service credit		-		-		3.1		2.3
Actuarial loss		(0.7)		(0.7)		-		-

Total net periodic benefit income	$	2.4	$	1.9	$	2.4	$	1.0

Contributions

There were no significant contributions to the pension plan trusts during the three months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015. We estimate that we will make payments of approximately $2.0 million for benefit payments and contributions related to our Pension Plans and $7.3 million for benefit payments related to the OPEB plans for the year ending December 31, 2016.

Defined Contribution Plans

Most of our employees participate in defined contribution plans under which we make contributions to individual employee accounts. Our expense related to our defined contribution plans was approximately $4.0 million and $3.9 million for the three months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015, respectively.