Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank Griffin who wrote (33731)	8/31/2000 12:20:39 AM
From: Mr. Whist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Frank: Thanks for your thoughtful analysis. Were you ever a union member? My fear is not that big government will disrupt the lives of me and my family and fellow workers, but that big business will. I sat through maybe 50-60 bargaining sessions on three different occasions during the '90s. In several sessions doors were slammed, fingers pointed, voices raised and walkouts occurred (by both management and labor). I know what a temptation a well-funded pension plan presents to a company whose stock price has been going sideways for 20 months. I know how the suits who make $150,000 a year and who crunch numbers for a living think on a lot of issues. Thousands of workers in the early '80s were left high and dry when companies deceitfully dipped into pension funds. In the intervening years, Congress has made it tougher (not impossible) for companies to raid these pension funds, or buy other companies simply to raid pension funds. I don't want to see us return to those days of the early '80s. In speeches to labor, Gore, Gebhardt and others have cited the need for American workers to be assured a solid, safe retirement. I have heard no such promise from Bush. With a Republican Congress and Republican president, my fear is that Congress would ease restrictions on, say, pension overfunding, allowing corportions to "utilize" this overfunding for corporate purposes. I'm sure lobbyists for big business already have legislation drafted to this effect. The danger of doing this, of course, is that if an economic downturn occurred, Joe Worker might only get 75 cents on the buck -- or 50 cents on the buck -- or zero on the buck -- that he expected for his retirement. Just what I have described has happened with older IBM employees after the company announced it was switching from a defined benefits pension plan to a cash balance pension plan. I watched with interest the congressional hearings on C-Span. I recall a bargaining session in '97 when the company's actuary and the company's benefits administrator were chatting prior to the start of the meeting. They were tossing back and forth ideas on how to screw the workers out of pension money, i.e. what's legal, what isn't, as easily as my son and I discuss the National Hockey League playoffs. At the end of that day I thanked God that I wasn't in a line of work where I had to screw someone else to get ahead in life.