Employee Benefit Plans

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2012

Employee Benefit Plans [Abstract]

Employee Benefit Plans

14. Employee Benefit Plans

The Company offers various postretirement benefits to its employees.

The components of benefit plan expense consisted of the following:

( in thousands)				Three months ended						Nine months ended
				September 30,						September 30,
	2012			2011			2012			2011
Interest cost	$	806		$	957		$	2,406		$	2,728
Expected return on plan assets, net of expenses		(935	)		(730	)		(2,635	)		(2,212	)
Actuarial (gain)/loss		513			48			1,563			79
Total for defined benefit plans		384			275			1,334			595
Supplemental executive retirement plan ("SERP")		923			648			2,723			1,624
Defined contribution plans		3,213			2,704			11,568			10,734
Total	$	4,520		$	3,627		$	15,625		$	12,953

We contributed $0.6 million to fund current benefit payments for our nonqualified supplemental executive retirement plan ("SERP") during the year-to-date period of 2012. We anticipate contributing $4.0 million to fund the SERP's benefit payments during the remainder of fiscal 2012.  We made contributions totaling $9.2 million to our SNI Pension Plan during 2012.