chance!!
BROKEN PROMISES: THE UNITED AIRLINES PENSION CRISIS
An Online Hearing sponsored by Congressman George Miller
Friday, May 27, 2005
DIRECTIONS TO SUBMIT TESTIMONY
All United Airlines employees and retirees are invited to submit
statements on how the potential termination of their pension plan
personally would impact their lives and families. Appropriate
statements regarding this personal impact may be posted on this
online hearing page and shared with Members of Congress. To have
your statement considered for inclusion in this historic hearing,
please send your statement (500 words or less) via e-mail to
2174.lounge@mail.house.gov. Please include your full name, address,
and phone number (only names and hometowns will be posted).
Statements will be accepted throughout the weeklong hearing, from
Monday, May 23, through Friday, June 3.
UPDATE
Because of the overwhelming response, this e-hearing will be held
open another week! We will continue to accept witness statements
from workers until June 3rd. We have already received over 1,000
statements. Our staff is pouring through them and posting as many of
them as possible onto this site and will continue to post. Each one
is being read, and each one will become part of the record of this e-
hearing, whether it is posted on the site or not. We have been
sharing excerpts with Members of Congress. Your voices are being
heard. As of today, there are now 83 House co-sponsors to our bill
H.R. 2327 – which would place a six-month moratorium on the kind of
PBGC-initiated pension plan terminations that are threatened at
United Airlines. And, as of last night, Senator Kennedy, joined by
Senators Akaka and Lautenberg, introduced a Senate companion bill.
You can read Senator Kennedy's statement upon introduction at the
link below.
Welcome to a major innovation in the United States House of
Representatives: the first Online Congressional Hearing – using
technology to allow expert witnesses, affected Americans and Members
of Congress to discuss a high priority issue without the delay,
expense and time restrictions of a traditional hearing.
By employing email and the Internet, we can hold a hearing at any
time, on any subject; we can invite the most well-informed
participants regardless of their ability to travel or the
congressional schedule. The Online Congressional Hearing is an
important information gathering innovation that will allow more
Americans, and the news media, to participate in the public debate
on high priority issues facing Americans.
Online Congressional Hearings will address issues that have not
received adequate attention from the Committees of the Congress. In
some cases, like this one concerning the severe pension crisis
facing employees of United Airlines and potentially other airlines,
our hearings will focus on issues that are ignored by the Republican
leadership of the United States Congress.
The subject of this first hearing is the decision of United Airlines
to abruptly terminate its traditional pension plan and dump $6.6
billion of losses onto the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
(PBGC), the public agency that is supposed to guarantee private
pensions for retirees.
The stakes for 120,000 United Airlines employees and retirees are
very high -- they face deep and permanent cuts in their retirement
benefits if the PBGC takes control of United's pension plans. The
takeover of the plan will result in pension benefit cuts averaging
25 percent to 50 percent for United's employees and retirees -- a
loss of over $3 billion for these men and women who have worked for
years with the promise of a secure pension.
The Democratic Caucus of the Committee on Education and the
Workforce is conducting this Online Congressional Hearing to solicit
testimony from the hard-working employees of United who have given
years of service to the public and to United Airlines, but in return
are losing promised benefits, fair wages, and job security. We are
inviting testimony from pension experts, the PBGC, and United
Airlines' management as well. We believe our innovative Online
Congressional Hearing will provide an important forum for this
discussion in a Congress that has repeatedly ignored the growing
concerns of Americans about their retirement security, the growing
gap in income, and the impact of the refusal of Republican leaders
and President Bush to raise the minimum wage. Once the hearing
record is complete, we will circulate a report to the public, the
media, and online, as well as enter the conclusions into the
Congressional Record.
I urge you to participate in this unprecedented Online Congressional
Hearing. Please see instructions for submitting testimony to the
right (above), and note the links to other witness' statements
below.
Sincerely,
GEORGE MILLER
Senior Democratic Member
Committee on Education and the Workforce