|
Urgent Action Needed: Save Our Pensions!
Non AFA Member Page
United Flight Attendants' Pensions are under attack. United management has brokered a last minute deal with the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. In return for a payment of approximately $1.5 billion, the PBGC has agreed to withdraw its objections in the bankruptcy proceedings and to allow United to terminate our pension plans. MORE...
| Sample Letter for Campaign |
Subject: Urgent Action Needed: Save Our Pensions
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
Pensions at United Airlines are under attack. I am extremely concerned, as I would hope you are, that the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) has agreed with United Airlines to withdraw its objection in bankruptcy proceedings to the termination of all United Airlines employee pension plans. Despite its statutory role as the protector of the defined benefit pension plan system, the PBGC is poised to allow United Airlines to terminate its pension plans.
The agreement with United Airlines is scheduled to be reviewed by the bankruptcy court on May 10, 2005, which would short-circuit our right to due process in defending our pension plan during hearings that were previously scheduled to begin May 11, 2005. This is all the more indefensible when the agency has taken the position that the United Airlines Flight Attendant plan "can and should be maintained by the company upon emergence from Chapter 11."
Why would the PBGC agree to a deal with United Airlines that accepts a payment of approximately $1.5 billion for its bankruptcy claim in return for termination of the United plans? Those funds could have been applied to ensuring the viability of the plans, and specifically the Flight Attendant Pension Plan. Why, and on what statutory authority, would the PBGC agree to terminate a plan it considered viable? This is directly contrary to the agency's earlier assertion just recently that "[b]ased on available information, we continue to believe that the interests of the participants and the pension insurance program would best be served by the continuance of the AFA Plan." If termination is not in the interests of the plan participants or in the interests of the agency, then termination must be entirely arbitrary.
The PBGC itself has asserted that termination of these plans under the circumstances would set a dangerous precedent for the termination of all of America's defined benefit pension plans, potentially placing the burden of retirement security in the laps of the American taxpayer. This is the exact outcome the creation of the agency was designed to prevent.
The stakes are clear: terminating these plans under these circumstances threatens to trigger the collapse of private defined benefit plans as a vehicle for retirement security.
I would ask you, and all members of Congress who share a concern about the retirement security of workers in America, to contact the PBGC Board of Directors, including Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao, Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snow, and Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez and urge an immediate review of the decision by the PBGC to enter into this settlement agreement with United Airlines. I believe a thorough review will conclude that the settlement agreement should be rescinded and the PBGC should resume the fight to prevent United executives from terminating these pension plans.
Thank you for your immediate assistance as the outcome of events in the next week will determine the viability of my retirement security along side millions of other Americans.
Sincerely,
|
