[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18112-18113]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             PENSION REFORM

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, there has been a significant development in 
private pension law this week, and I have come to the floor to discuss 
it briefly because I think it is something that will be of enormous 
interest to working families across the country who, of course, have 
been reading for months now about their pension plans going belly up. 
These are workers who work hard, play by the rules, hope to have a 
dignified retirement and have understood that Social Security was never 
going to cover all of their retirement security needs. So they have 
sought to have a private pension, and companies across this country 
have given them the impression--falsely, in a number of instances--that 
their private pension would be secure and there for them when they 
retire.
  One of the aspects of this whole challenge, with respect to pension 
security, has been to eliminate what I believe is a double standard 
today in private pension laws. There is in fact a double standard in 
private pension law because so often the executive retirement benefits 
get hidden in a lockbox while the worker ends up getting creamed in the 
process.
  What we have done, on a bipartisan basis in the Senate Finance 
Committee, is to say that that double standard, the standard that 
protects the executives while it clobbers the workers, will no longer 
be tolerated under our private pension statutes.
  As a result of a change that a number of our colleagues worked on, 
which was backed by Chairman Grassley and Senator Baucus, if this 
provision that we have developed becomes law, if a company pension plan 
is funded at less than 80 percent, then the executive pensions cannot 
be hidden under the ruse of being ``deferred compensation.'' That is 
what we have seen come to light in the last few months, that somehow 
the executives walk away with millions of dollars worth of pension 
benefits under the guise of it somehow being something called deferred 
compensation while the workers end up seeing their pensions disappear 
by 40, 50, 60 percent.
  This provision, in my view, is extremely important because it will 
prevent companies whose pension plans are at risk of going under from 
protecting the executive pension while allowing the employees' pensions 
to sink like a stone.
  An example of this would be a flight attendant from Tigard, OR, who 
gave United Airlines 16 years of service, saw her pension fall recently 
to a net of $138 a month, while the CEO of United is going to continue 
to receive $4.5 million. Now, of course, the CEO claims it is not 
really a pension, that this was compensation worked out before the 
executive came to United. But I can tell you that elderly woman in 
Tigard, OR, would sure like to have what the United executive has, 
regardless of what it is technically referred to under pension law.
  A lot more needs to be done to ensure that the executives are not 
going to reap these huge gains at the expense of their workers. Captain 
Duane Woerth of the Airline Pilots Association said it well, in my 
view, when he said, ``While thousands of pilots will retire with only a 
fraction of the pension benefits

[[Page 18113]]

they earned and expected, airline executives can look forward to 
retirements knowing that their nest eggs are solid gold.'' This was 
reported in Fortune magazine. And there are numerous other examples 
where generous executive pensions have been protected at the expense of 
the workers' retirement.
  In March 2002, for example, US Air CEO Stephen Wolf took a lump-sum 
pension payout of $15 million, including benefits, for 24 years of 
service that he never actually performed. Six months later, the company 
filed for bankruptcy and terminated its pilot pension plan, leaving the 
Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation with $2.2 billion in liabilities. 
Where is the fairness in all of that? The executive takes this huge 
golden parachute away while the workers try to figure out how to make 
ends meet when the company files for bankruptcy and terminates the 
pension plan.
  Three months before United filed for bankruptcy in 2002, the company 
placed $4.5 million in a special bankruptcy protected trust for their 
CEO, Mr. Glenn Tilton. United then terminated all of its pension plans 
in 2005, leaving the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation with $6.6 
billion in liability.
  In 2002, the Motorola Company chose to not make any contributions to 
its pension plan for 70,000 employees and retirees, a plan that was 
underfunded by $1.4 billion. At the same time, Motorola found another 
$38 million to give its top executives a variety of pension perks.
  In 1999, IBM's cash balance conversion resulted in dramatic pension 
cuts for the older workers. It is still being litigated in the courts, 
but in 2002, IBM CEO Lou Gerstner, who oversaw the cash conversion, 
retired with a pension of $1.1 million per year.
  In November of 2002, Delta began phasing out its traditional defined 
benefit plan for 56,000 employees and replaced it with a cash balance 
pension plan. As Delta was shorting its workers, their former CEO got a 
generous guaranteed pension plan of $1 million per year that will be 
available to him when he turns 65.
  These are a few examples, Mr. President, of excessive executive 
generosity, and they have been particularly egregious in the airline 
sector, where there have been numerous threats of bankruptcy and actual 
problems with respect to keeping the workers' pensions intact or even a 
portion of them secure.
  I am pleased the Finance Committee took a significant first step 
yesterday toward cutting off this corporate spigot that has been 
gushing millions of dollars for executive pensions but produces less 
than a trickle of funds for tens of thousands of hard-working 
Americans. There is more to do.
  Certainly the first step that began yesterday in the Senate Finance 
Committee at ending this double standard came about because Chairman 
Grassley and Senator Baucus worked in a bipartisan fashion, and Senator 
Bingaman, Senator Kerry, Senator Schumer, and others joined me in 
pressing for this change. But suffice it to say there is more to do in 
this area. Certainly the question of what companies are required to do 
in terms of making their premium payments is important. In the days 
ahead the Finance Committee and eventually the Senate as a body will 
have to take up these issues.
  What I wanted to bring to the Senate's attention today is that this 
is an important start. It is a start that keeps faith with American 
workers who have come to my townhall meetings. The Presiding Officer is 
from Georgia and represents a number of workers affected by the 
financial problems of Delta Airlines. People come to our town meetings 
and ask, how is it that the executives get off scot-free with respect 
to these pension issues while we are getting clobbered? I am tired of 
reading about how the executives have somehow been able, under the 
guise of deferred compensation or special retirement benefits that are 
protected from bankruptcy proceedings, and I am tired of seeing how the 
executives always come out hunky-dory while the workers end up trying 
to figure how to make ends meet when their pensions have been slashed 
by 40, 50, or 60 percent.
  There is more to do in terms of reforming private pension law, but 
this effort to eliminate the double standard where executives get 
protected and workers get hurt, eliminating that double standard is at 
the center of what good bipartisan pension reform ought to be all 
about. Fortunately, the Senate Committee on Finance took a big step in 
the right direction by saying yesterday that if a company's pension 
plan is not actually funded, then the executives cannot find their way 
to yet another lockbox and protect themselves with these deferred 
compensation arrangements.
  I yield the floor.

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