Lucent Retirees Organization

6118 Monteverde Drive – San Jose, CA  95120   Phone: 409-268-0429

email: howieking@sbcglobal.net      LRO Website: www.lucentretirees.com  

 

 

August 10, 2004

 

 

Dear ________________:

 

I’m writing to ask you for a pledge to support the passage of legislation that will protect the pensions and benefits of millions of retired Americans.  Practically everyday we read or hear news reports about a company defaulting on its pension obligations or eliminating health care or other promised benefits.

 

Unless Congress takes immediate steps to prevent this corporate abuse, more and more retirees who fully expected to live out their “golden years” with their pension and health care benefits  intact are becoming part of an impoverished underclass. 

 

My former employer, Lucent Technologies, has eroded its one-time pension surpluses and has reduced, and in some cases eliminated, health care and other benefits.  Lucent retirees this year have experienced increases in cost as high as 300 percent in order to continue their health care insurance.  In many cases, retirees have been forced to use up to 20 percent of their pension income just to maintain their health care coverage.

 

In an effort to get a better understanding of our situation and to become a greater force in protecting our future, a group of retirees formed what is known as the Lucent Retirees Organization-LRO. We now have almost 10,000 members to protect a base of 127,000 retirees.

We are incorporated in the state of New York and governed by a Board of Directors and 9 Regional Directors.

 

As the Western Regional Director for the Lucent Retirees Organization, I am the advocate for those retirees and their dependents living in the states of California, Nevada and Hawaii. We communicate on a regular basis through local meetings, e-mail and our web site, www.lucentretirees.com.  I want to tell them about what you will do to protect retirees’ pensions and benefits.  Will you support H.R. 1322—the Emergency Retiree Health Benefits Protection Act—or legislation similar to it that would prevent corporations from reducing or eliminating health care benefits and restore the benefits that have been taken away?  Will you commit to creating a law that will force corporations to disclose whether their pension plans would have sufficient assets to guarantee payment of full promised benefits in the event of corporate failure?

 

The LRO is an apolitical group. We post no allegiance to any candidate or political party. We will, however, vote for those candidates whose platform is in the best interest of our members. If you will pledge to safeguard what retirees have earned over decades of labor, then you are the person that retirees will want to keep in Washington, DC.  I shall look forward to receiving your response and future action.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

Howard M. King