Dozens of Wanamakers employees never got their pensions

Bill Whiting’s job at Wanamakers holds a dear place in his heart. For Whiting, who worked there in his 20s and 30s, it was a deeply formative time — and a whole lotta fun.

He was hired as a corporate designer in the 1970s, back in the renowned department store’s heyday, and during his nearly seven years there, he worked on fashion shows and window displays, and even designed a massive Shinto shrine for the store’s Japan fair.

He immortalized the tie and shoelaces he wore to the interview, using them as upholstery on two tiny French chairs he made for a 19th-century replica of a Spruce Street townhouse. Decades later, he still keeps in touch with many of his former coworkers.

But there’s something about the job that doesn’t sit right with Whiting, who is now 74:

He never got his pension.

He’s certain he contributed to it — and he’s not sure how to access it. Through a Facebook group, he has found more than 40 former employees who are in the same boat.

Some tried Macy’s — the current owner after several Wanamakers acquisitions — and had no luck. Others, such as Whiting, tried the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC), the government agency that protects workers’ pensions. A representative told him that in order to help the former workers, the PBGC needed to know the pension plan number. But Whiting didn’t have any records from that time. His colleagues didn’t, either.

“You know, from your 20s to early 30s, I don’t think it ever dawns on you that you’re gonna get old, let alone die,” he said.

Many, he said, have given up on ever getting the money they were promised.

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A Macy’s spokesperson said the company would evaluate each request from former employees regarding the pension and send a written response.

Whiting and his colleagues’ situation is not uncommon. Employees who worked at a company like Wanamakers that was bought and sold over the years are especially vulnerable to losing track of their pensions.

The PBGC holds benefits for 61,000 workers — known as “missing participants” — whose employers terminated their pensions plans and transferred the benefit—s to the agency, a PBGC spokesperson said.

Wanamakers and two of the companies that acquired it over the years, Woodward & Lothrop and JCPenney, terminated their defined benefit plans, the PBGC spokesperson confirmed. When a pension plan is terminated, it no longer pays out recurring benefits. Instead, the money is converted into lump-sum payments or annuities.

PBGC said it could not comment on specific cases but encouraged former employees to contact the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (1-800-400-7242) — even if they don’t have their pension plan number.

Ron Garwood worked at Wanamakers for 45 years through five different owners including Macy’s. It was the best career he could have had, he said. As a visual merchandise manager, he was in charge of a team that designed how goods were displayed across the store, and the company allowed his group creative control. He started there in 1966.

“Back in those days,” he said, “money was no object.”

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He remembers members of the Wanamaker family being present around the store, tapping on the window and saying hello to the workers. “They made us feel special,” he said.

But Garwood, who is now 80 and lives in Tennessee, said that he, too, never received his pension.

Tyler Compton runs the UMass Boston Pension Action Center, which focuses on helping people in the New England area track down their lost pensions, called it “unfortunately very, very common” that workers don’t know how to get the benefits they’ve earned. The good news, though, is that pensions are protected by the government through the PBGC.

“It is incredibly rare for a pension to just disappear,” she said. “That being said, it is very difficult to trace them.”

Her center serves 300 to 350 clients a year. The recovery process can take anywhere between six to 18 months, and even longer if a pension plan disagrees that a worker is owed. In that case, her team helps retirees file a claim for benefits and eventually appeal, if necessary. Sometimes the discrepancy is due to a record-keeping error, she said, since some records are so old that they were handwritten or composed on typewriters.

The Mid-America Pension Rights Project covers workers in Pennsylvania who are trying to get ahold of their pension.

After The Inquirer reached out to PBGC, the agency offered its help to Whiting. He is in talks with it now, as well as with the Mid-America Pension Rights Project.

Garwood, though, doesn’t hold out much hope that he’ll get his pension.

He could certainly use it; he and his partner are on Social Security, “which is great, but there’s only so much,” and he said there are people he knows from his Wanamakers days whom he’d like to help financially.

“Technically, it really was to go to us,” Garwood said. “That’s what a pension is.”