Employee Benefit Plans

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2017

Compensation and Retirement Disclosure [Abstract]

Employee Benefit Plans

Employee Benefit Plans

We sponsor two noncontributory defined benefit pension plans as well as two non-qualified Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans ("SERPs"). Both of the defined benefit plans and the SERPs have frozen the accrual of future benefits.

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.

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)	2017			2016
Interest cost	$	6,486		$	6,770
Expected return on plan assets, net of expenses	(4,360		)	(4,597		)
Amortization of actuarial loss	1,084			998
Total for defined benefit plans	3,210			3,171
Multi-employer plans	74			43
SERPs	257			279
Defined contribution plan	2,904			2,188
Net periodic benefit cost	$	6,445		$	5,681

We contributed $0.2 million to fund current benefit payments for our SERPs and $1.1 million for our defined benefit pension plans during the three months ended March 31, 2017. During the remainder of 2017, we anticipate contributing an additional $1.4 million to fund the SERPs' benefit payments and an additional $16.4 million to fund our qualified defined benefit pension plans.