Employee Benefit Plans

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2019

Retirement Benefits [Abstract]

Employee Benefit Plans

Employee Benefit Plans

We sponsor a noncontributory defined benefit pension plan and non-qualified Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans ("SERPs"). The accrual for future benefits has been frozen in our defined benefit pension plan and SERPs.

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.

The components of the employee benefit plans expense consisted of the following:

	Three Months Ended   September 30,						Nine Months Ended   September 30,
(in thousands)	2019			2018			2019			2018
Interest cost	$	5,865		$	5,962		$	17,465		$	17,812
Expected return on plan assets, net of expenses	(4,865		)	(5,734		)	(14,981		)	(17,199		)
Amortization of actuarial loss and prior service cost	823			1,026			1,967			2,867
Total for defined benefit pension plans	1,823			1,254			4,451			3,480
Multi-employer plans	4			50			103			141
SERPs	248			2,275			756			2,826
Defined contribution plan	2,743			2,137			7,433			6,908
Net periodic benefit cost	4,818			5,716			12,743			13,355
Allocated to discontinued operations	—			(132		)	—			(509		)
Net periodic benefit cost — continuing operations	$	4,818		$	5,584		$	12,743		$	12,846

We contributed $0.9 million to fund current benefit payments for our SERPs and $13.8 million for our defined benefit pension plan during the nine months ended September 30, 2019. During the remainder of 2019, we anticipate contributing an additional $0.3 million to fund the SERPs' benefit payments and an additional $4.8 million to fund our qualified defined benefit pension plan.

In the third quarter of 2018, we recognized a $2.0 million settlement charge related to lump-sum distributions from our SERP. Settlement charges are recorded when total lump-sum distributions for a plan's year exceed the total projected service cost and interest cost for that plan year.