“FedEx Closes Pension Plan to New Hires”: that’s the headline at the Wall Street Journal today. Or, as the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported, “FedEx to launch a new 401k plan with a higher match, but no pension with it.

” Superficially, it looks like a repeat of the same old story of employers taking pensions away from their employees. But, in fact, there are a few wrinkles here.

In the first place, FedEx had already frozen its traditional pension plan, back in 2008, ceasing all new accruals and giving employees a hybrid plan instead. Beginning in that year, employees received instead a “cash balance plan” they called a Portable Pension Account, with credits of 5% of pay (up to 8% for more senior workers), as well as a 401(k) with a match producing an employer contribution of 3.5% when employees contribute 6% of pay. (Yeah, that’s an oddly unround number to my eye as well, and likely means a combination of fixed/noncontingent contributions as well as the traditional match.)

With the move away from the cash balance plan, employees will now receive an 8% potential match if they contribute 6% (likely, again, a combination of noncontingent and matching contributions). In fact, the switch will be mandatory for newly-hired employees, and existing employees will be able to chose whether to stay or switch. At first glance, it appears that the company is simply cutting its contribution by 0.5% to 3.5% by age/service group, in going from 5% + 3.5% or 8% + 3.5% to a simple 8%. But there are two wrinkles.

Read more @Forbes