The MEC Legislative Committee reports the US Senate has named five members to the conference committee for negotiations with the House on the pension reform bill, designed to reduce catch-up payments required over the next two years by sponsors of underfunded private pension plans.  When congress returns from its recess on February 23, the House will need to appoint its conferees.  The MEC Legislative Committee writes: "We are confident that the bill will proceed through the conference process quickly and provide our company the relief needed for a timely exit from Chapter 11."

The United Retired Pilots Benefit Protection Association (URPBPA), the Hall/Dubinsky group, reports that their attorneys have succeeded, over UAL's objections, in convincing the Bankruptcy Judge in allowing a separate committee of five retired pilots to negotiate retiree health benefit issues with UAL. The company wanted a single committee to represent retired pilots together with retired salaried and management employees. The Judge will make his selections from a list of candidates who send their names directly to him----rejecting the idea that UAL would recruit the candidates. All of the nine directors on the URPBPA Board have evidently submitted their names. The Judge will announce his selections on February 20th.

The attorney representing the pilot retirees on US Airways has reported on the two actions they are pursuing in federal court.  He writes that after the Bankruptcy judge concluded that a factual basis existed to support US Airway's claim it could not successfully exit bankruptcy without terminating the pilot's pension plan, the judge ruled that the plan could only be terminated if ALPA agreed---which it did.  The retired pilots filed an appeal to the termination which will be finally heard on February 26th.  The retirees claim they were denied an opportunity to discover the true financial status of the plan before US Airways and ALPA terminated it. They are claiming it was not as badly underfunded as the bankruptcy court was led to believe. They expect a decision by summer.

In a second action, they are seeking a summary judgment to correct the worst mistakes made by US Airways and the federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation in calculating the interim benefits currently being paid to retirees. It is the PBGC's position that it is OK to allow their normal procedure to run its course----where a final accurate determination of retiree benefit entitlement will be made in maybe three years and any errors in the interim benefits will be reconciled at that time, and all participants made whole retroactive to the termination date of 3-31-03.  The PBGC argues that it is still doing the precise calculations for a string of other plans it had taken over before it took over the US Airway's pilot plan, and it cannot bump these other plans by putting the US Airways plan at the head of the line.