Employee Benefit Plans

We sponsor various noncontributory defined benefit pension plans covering substantially all full-time employees that began employment prior to June 30, 2008. Benefits earned by employees are generally based upon employee compensation and years of service credits. We also have a non-qualified Supplemental Executive Retirement Plan ("SERP"). Effective June 30, 2009, we froze the accrual of benefits under our defined benefit pension plans and our SERP that cover the majority of our employees.

We sponsor a defined contribution plan covering substantially all non-union and certain union employees. We match a portion of employees' voluntary contributions to this plan. In connection with freezing the accrual of service credits under certain of our defined benefit pension plans, we began contributing additional amounts to certain employees' defined contribution retirement accounts in 2011. These transition credits, which we will make through 2015, are determined based upon the employee’s age, compensation and years of service.

Other union-represented employees are covered by defined benefit pension plans jointly sponsored by us and the union, or by union-sponsored multi-employer plans.

The components of the expense consisted of the following:



	Three Months Ended March 31,
(in thousands)	2014			2013

Service cost	$	21		$	17
Interest cost	6,278			5,976
Expected return on plan assets, net of expenses	(5,859		)	(5,371		)
Amortization of actuarial loss	642			1,061
Total for defined benefit plans	1,082			1,683
Multi-employer plans	119			120
SERP	296			286
Defined contribution plans	3,160			3,379
Net periodic benefit cost	$	4,657		$	5,468

We contributed $0.3 million to fund current benefit payments for our SERP during the three months ended March 31, 2014. We anticipate contributing an additional $0.6 million to fund the SERP’s benefit payments during the remainder of 2014. We contributed $0.1 million to our defined benefit plans during the first three months of 2014.