Via Detroit Free Press
By Susan Tompor
Randy Sigley, 63, who grew up in West Virginia, remembers that jobs were hard to come by in the mid-1970s so he headed to Ohio to work in a factory making concrete pipe.
He got that job about a year out of high school and made sure to hold onto it at least 10 years because he always heard that he’d qualify for a pension if he stayed that long.
But decades later when he tried to collect that pension, he ran into a giant roadblock. He was told he wasn’t owed a dime.
Most people think you go to work, retire and, if there’s a pension, you ask the company to send the checks. For many people, it works out fine.
For thousands of others, though, unexpected hurdles stop them from getting a pension check. People end up moving; companies close down plants and offices. Small pensions are easily forgotten about years after you left a job. Even some 401(k)s can go unclaimed in some cases when you leave a company.