[SpamCop-Social] Cheney's Gain is Workers' Loss

[Frog Prince]

"This is the kind of story that makes working folks' blood boil.

According to an account in the New York Times, employees of the Dresser-Rand
Co. began receiving puzzling letters this summer that they had become
eligible for retirement benefits even though they were still working.

To get their money, all they had to do was call the Halliburton Co., which
had bought Dresser-Rand four years ago and then sold it a bit later.

As the employees called Halliburton, they discovered that early retirement
money was really a reduction in their pension benefits.

According to the Times, the workers have 90 days to sign up for a much
smaller payment than promised earlier or forfeit their right to a lump sum
pension payment forever.

Also, the Times reported, employees who had already retired from
Dresser-Rand began getting letters telling them that they had been paid too
much and should return thousands of dollars in pension money to Halliburton.

As employees began comparing notes, they estimated that collectively they
were being stripped of $25 million in benefits, about $50,000 for each of
about 400 people.

Apparently, this is all legal. We don't want to regulate these big companies
too much, you know.

And it happens a lot when corporations swallow up and sell each other. The
Dresser-Rand employees were participants in a defined-benefit pension plan,
a traditional plan that for the workers doesn't depend on the stock market
and is insured by the federal government in case the corporation goes
bankrupt. When mergers and spin-offs occur, however, employees can lose
benefits because the plans are merged as well.

In effect, the Times said, Halliburton treated the Dresser-Rand employees as
if they had resigned and had started their jobs anew. Under the complicated
law governing defined-benefit pensions, this is apparently perfectly OK with
the government.

What's so disgusting about this turn of events is that Halliburton didn't
treat Dick Cheney that way. Cheney, who was Halliburton's chief executive
during the acquisition and spin-off of Dresser-Rand, was awarded an early
retirement package, even though he was too young under the contract, when he
stepped down to run for vice president.

Cheney's package has been estimated to be worth $32 million. Good thing
Halliburton was able to extract that $25 million from those hapless
Dresser-Rand workers.

Someone's got to pay."