SiliconBeat

Con-Way, the San Mateo shipping company, announced taking several actions to “reduce expenses and maintain a strong cash position in response to the declining economy.”

The company is suspending its contributions to employees’ 401(k) plans, reducing salaries of its chief executive, chief financial officer and freight division president and the retainer paid to its board by 10 percent and the pay of everyone else by five percent, eliminating a provision for retirement benefit increases based on increases in future employee compensation related to its defined-benefit pension plan, and changing its vacation and paid-time-off policies with respect to when such hours are earned and recorded as expense.

The moves are projected to safe the company between $100-$130 million this year.

We posted last June about the costs involved in relocating Con-Way’s chief executive from Michigan to California when he was promoted to his position in 2005, and then the costs to relocate him back to Michigan when the company decided that’s where he should actually be in order to be more “centrally located geographically” to the company’s freight business.