Note 7 - Employee Benefit Plans

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2014

Compensation and Retirement Disclosure [Abstract]

Pension and Other Postretirement Benefits Disclosure [Text Block]

Note 7.   Employee Benefit Plans

We sponsor defined benefit pension plans covering substantially all U.S. employees.  Net periodic pension cost for the plans consisted of the following for the three months ended March 31, 2014 and 2013 (in thousands):

	Three Months Ended March 31,
	2014			2013
Service cost	$	1,020		$	1,057
Interest cost		1,186			970
Expected return on plan assets		(1,249	)		(1,204	)
Amortization of prior service cost (benefit)		(84	)		97
Amortization of net loss		756			776
Net periodic benefit cost	$	1,629		$	1,696

In April 2014, we contributed $2.0 million, par value, of our Senior Notes to our funded pension plan, and expect to contribute a total of $7.5 million, par value, over the course of 2014 (see Note 9 for more information). We anticipate that the Notes contributed will be sold by the plan. We expect to contribute approximately $0.3 million to our unfunded supplemental executive retirement plan in 2014.