Date: 2006-07-20
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker. as we just heard in the colloquy between the majority leader and the minority whip. there is expectation that a conference committee may conclude on the pension reform bill. and that is why I rise today because that bill may. in fact. be coming to the floor of the House of Representatives and to the Senate within the next week. L0 1515 I rise to urge my colleagues to vote again to send a message to the conferees that they should not conclude this. report until they provide for the protection of older workers who are facing the conversions to cash balance plans. That means older workers who the companies are now putting on notice that they will change their benefits. they will no longer realize what they had long anticipated. the benefits of a defined benefit plan. that they will now get a substitute plan for their current pension plan. what is called a cash balance plan. Despite overwhelming votes in support of protecting older workers pensions in the House and in the" Senate. the Republican leadership plans to thumb its nose at older workers and exclude the vital transition protection. That means that many workers will lose hundreds of dollars a month in expected retirement benefits. Many of these workers will be in excess of 50 years of age. and it is highly unlikely they will be able to recover the loss of their retirement benefits. retirement benefits they have been counting on for many years. retirement benefits they have been counting on in exchange for their labor. that they signed a contractin exchange for their labor with their employers. and today. the Congress is getting ready to tell them we are sorry. we are not going to make the employers live up to their agreements. and we are not -even going to provide a transition to you to soften the economic blow. If this is permitted to happen. it is shameful and it is an abuse of power by the Republican leadership. arrogantly defying the blear wishes of Members of both the House and the Senate on behalf of very special interests that do not happen to be the workers of this country. The conference language draft by the Republican conferees is a pension Trojan horse and allows companies to legally renege on their promises to workers who played by the rules. who were told that they could accrue benefits to retire. especially those who spent decades at the company. Here is what AARP CEO William Novelli says about this backroom Republican deal for older workers. "AARP is deeply troubled that members of the pension conference committee may be considering adopting language from the House bill that would severely undercut pension protections against age discrimination currently provided older workers under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. We cannot support legislation that would undermine the age discrimination laws and permit the reduction of pension benefits for older workers. thus discouraging older workers from continuing to participate in the workforce. Our members. and older workers in general. care a great deal about these issues. and we will be informing them of the outcome of this action." The Senate passed its pension bill with these protections 972. And the -House voted on these measures overwhelmingly in a motion to instruct earlier. It also not only cuts cash balance. but it cuts the protections to the pilots. Pilots who are required under Federal law to retire at age 60 now take a double hit with their pensions going into the PBGC. Because they retired early. not that they wanted to retire. they are required under Federal law to retire early. but because they retired early. they take an additional hit on their pension. and this affects many. many airline pilots and is an unfair treatment to these individuals. Again. the House and the Senate have voted twice to protect older workers in cash balance conversions. The House voted twice to protect airline pilots from unfair pension cuts at the PBGC. This motion to instrilct is about fundamental fairness to older workers. specifically for those older workers suddenly faced with cash balanceconversions and for those airline pilots faced with federally mandated early retirement. During the 1990s. hundreds of large employers switched to these cash balanae plans. including IBM. CSX. Verizon. and the Federal Government. When we changed our pension plan back in the 1990s. we did this. Motorola. Dow Chemical. Federal Express. Wells Fargo Bank and Honeywell. they all made the decision to provide a transition and a protection for older workers. realizing that those older workers had an expectation of retirement benefit. That was not going to happen. but theywould provide them some protection so they didnt take the full brunt of those changes. It is the decent thing to do. It is what Secretary Snow did when he was at CSX. It is what he voted to do at Verizon. This is the decent thing to do for workers. The benefits to the companies are immense. even if they protect these older workers in this situation. Mr. Speaker. I reserve the balance of my time.