New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Fund fiasco is tarnishing Golden Years

New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Fund fiasco is tarnishing Golden YearsFund fiasco is tarnishing
Golden Years

Lawmakers, unions must work to protect nest eggs

A recent federal court ruling allowing United Airlines to terminate its drastically underfunded pension plan and pile $6.6 billion of liabilities onto a small federal agency means retired pilot Ray Brice's monthly check could be cut nearly 80%, to about $2,000. But Brice's situation is not unusual.

The United pension default - the largest in U.S. history - is just one in a long line of bankruptcies and retirement plan meltdowns that have directly affected the retirement security of millions of Americans. And many more are left wondering if they're next.

The ultimate hope for pensioners rests, for now, in Washington, where the GOP is threatening to destroy the checks and balances system. But the GOP always wants votes, and there are millions of lives in the middle of this pension drama, which is not going to get any lighter without new laws that are less vague. This should be the focus of a new movement for our elected officials.

At this moment, we are finding that retirees are being told that their pension agreements do not hold up when the company for which they worked is sold. The worst-case scenarios have retirees being told that they've been overpaid and now owe back money to the company's new owners.

Along with new laws protecting retirement funds, it is obvious that the value of unions also should be reassessed. Unions must now figure out a better way to represent retired workers. Once companies have people in their employ whose job is to figure out ways of reducing costs, one can easily assume that the retiree, whose voice has no power in the collective bargaining process, will feel his neck stretched across the chopping board.

With all the talk about the rights of the unborn, it's time for laws that support the rights of those who were born a while ago, those who labored for decades and who now feel they deserve to be taken care of, especially since the agreements were already made. Retirees cannot remain silent, content to go out as casually as the aged in primitive societies, accepting the fact that they had outlived their usefulness and should expect to be abandoned and ignored. They deserve better.

Originally published on May 19, 2005