----- Original Message -----

 

Honorable President Bush:

 

I am a retiree from Lucent and I wish to impress upon you that we have already lost some of our promised benefits.  The Department of Labor and Congress are not helping us to maintain a decent standard of living.  The new health care package that you signed this past year is permitting corporate officers to pull the plug on medical, dental and life insurance benefits which were promised when we signed our agreement in December 1989 for an early retirement in order that the company could reduce their staff to a reasonable level.  The cost of a private medical and dental plan will cost my wife and I approximately 50% of the take home pay we expected to receive upon retirement.  Others are in a similar position.  I have been told that those who remained on their payroll after we retired from AT&T in 1989 received very sizable pay increases in the next few years following our retirement.  I suspect that some of those individuals are in a better financial position to cover their medical needs.

 

The Lucent Retirement Organization has petitioned the Department of Labor to provide assistance in our ability to gain access to Lucent's books for an outside auditor to evaluate their management of our pension plan provided as a trust by AT&T when they spun off Lucent.  If it is true that one of the Department of Labor employees stated that as retirees we do not fall under their umbrella, I think that employee and her supervisors should attend a training session for attitude adjustment.  If we had not taken early retirement, we certainly would have fallen under their umbrella.  What we suspect is happening at Lucent, as well as many other corporations, is the officers are stiffing the employees, especially the retired group.  What I think will happen is that the attitude of the worker will be to stay on the payroll as long as possible, to avoid the loss of benefits as we are witnessing them.  Of course, by those same employees remaining in the workforce, the Social Security system will breathe some new life as these people pay into it.

 

How did Lucent get into this position?  One of the ways is that they put money into the pockets of foreign governments and corporations in order to sell products to them.  At the same time, they were financing the purchase of these products for those very same corporations and governments.  We have heard recently that two or more of those managers are being prosecuted for this type of conduct.  They stole from the shareholders and employees.  Neither the Attorney General nor the SEC seem interested in doing much to steer corporations such as Lucent into an ethical direction.  It seems this job has been left to the Attorney General of New York to fight the battle.

 

Ellen Schultz, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has written about Lucent retirees in the past, published two outstanding stories in the November 10, 2004 issue.  Click on this link to read the articles  http://www.lucentretirees.com/mail1112.htm   The story with the headlined  "When Retirees Sue An Ex-Employer"  describes the four-year courageous efforts by GenCorp retirees' lawsuit to restore lost health care benefits.  The other story with  the headline: "Companies Sue Union Retirees To Cut Promised Health Benefits" cites cases where companies have sued  retired  former union members in order to reduce or eliminate health care benefits committed to in labor agreements.

 

The 8th paragraph of the second article states: "The retirees, by contrast, often find themselves in a bind -- unsure of their recourse and facing, as they age, the court system's typical long waits for legal resolution. The U.S. Labor Department is of little help. Retired workers 'aren't our constituents anymore,' says a spokeswoman for the department." This statement upsets me.  I hope you will take Elaine Chao to the woodshed and threaten to fire her if this is truly the attitude of her staff.

 

Troy Segler