Tenneco Puts Match on Hold

A company news release said the match suspension was part of a broad cost-cutting effort to deal with the slumping economy. Tenneco had matched 50%, up to the first 8% of pay.

In addition to cutting 1,100 jobs, other compensation and benefits components to the cost-cutting campaign include:

• eliminating 2008 performance bonuses for salaried employees
• reducing total annual compensation for the top 50 executives on average by more than 60%
• eliminating employee annual salary increases and implementing other salary control actions.

The company said it is also reducing capital expenditures by eliminating all discretionary capital spending including eliminating or deferring regional expansion projects and cutting spending tied to delayed customer launches; closing three manufacturing plants and one engineering facility; continuing to implement hourly layoffs at manufacturing plants worldwide; and initiating unpaid furloughs and work hour reductions for some salaried employees.

“We have and will continue to take aggressive actions to reduce costs, resize our operations and generate and preserve cash in order to weather this crisis,” Chairman and CEO Gregg Sherrill said in the statement.

Tenneco froze its defined benefit pension plan in 2007.