Association
of Ameritech/SBC Retirees
Winter / Spring
2005-2006 Newsletter
From the President’s Notepad,
It has been a few months since we’ve published our most recent Newsletter and much has occurred. First and foremost, the Association continues to grow its membership. This is so vitally important for it permits us to do things that will put a stamp on such things as ATT Corporate governance, more effectively communicating with our elected officials and, most importantly, communicating with you, our membership.
The Association has come a long way since the first time we
met as an ad-hoc group in
The Board, with the new session beginning in June, will have
seats located in
We have added to our means to provide its membership with
communications opportunities. The Board believes that in order for us to become
more effective, the membership must have easy effective tools to understand the
issues of the day and to act upon them. We have developed a message board, a
website and our newsletter. We are now working with our
As ATT grows and changes, our initiatives must also reflect
today’s reality. There are four different groups that represent retirees from
Pac Bell, SNET, (of course) Ameritech/SBC and (the old) ATT. We have formed a
coalition for the purpose of speaking on issues that are of common concern.
Representatives will be meeting the day before the ATT Annual Shareholders
meeting in
With our growth, we are now able to do things which heretofore were not possible. One of those is to actively pursue ATT Corporate Governance. The Board has authorized the purchase of sufficient ATT shares for the Association of Ameritech/SBC Retirees Inc. to submit Shareholder Proposals that can benefit ATT owners yet protect retiree interests. The Association has been looking forward to the day when we can take these steps.
There is much more that is going on. For instance:
Our new 1st VP, Carole Lovell, and I will be meeting with
Michigan Bell retirees from the
Thank you so much for your support. Without you none of this would be possible to achieve.
Bruce Beckman, President
Frequently asked question
If
there is one question that is more often asked than others it is whether or not
Retirees can suspend their SBC medical plan for a period of time and then
resume it. I recently received this response from the SBC Executive Response
team concerning this question and here it is:
-
You may re-enroll in a SBC medical insurance
plan or any other option made available to you by the Company in any future
year you choose during the appropriate enrollment period, if the coverage is
still an eligible benefit.
-
Re-enrollment would not be contingent on
current health status, e.g., pre-existing conditions.
-
Eligibility for the Care Plus, the Dental
Plan and other entitled benefits would continue even if you drop the medical
coverage in 2006 and in future years.
If you drop medical coverage, prescription drug coverage discontinues,
because the drug plan is part of the medical plan.
For
additional information, please see page 28 in the SBC Medical Plan SPD.
Please
save this information. -
Bruce
Letters to
the Editor
Dear Editor:
The front pages and lead stories on TV tell of lost
workers’ health benefits and reduced or even eliminated pensions. Our elected
officials seem again to be unable or unwilling to come to grips with pension
reform, fearing the impact it would have on “business” (campaign contributors).
These same businesses seem incapable of fulfilling a generation of promises
made to their dedicated workers and midlevel managers.
Symbolically those at Dephi, GM and ATT are the poster
children of what is going on in our culture.
These same companies, while unraveling their worker
commitments continue to pay exorbitant salaries and bonuses to Senior
Management. If one doubts it, just look at the severance package paid by SBC to
Don Dorman, the former head of ATT. $50,000,000 dollars for helping to reduce
one of our great American institutions to a pile of ash and then walking away.
Yet as these kinds of huge giveaways continue to take
place for senior management, our workers continue to see wages reduced and
benefits eliminated.
There is away to start the process for change. This
November, make sure the candidate you vote for is willing to support the
interests of today’s families and make laws that do not encourage these kinds
of business welfare giveaways.
Bruce Beckman
President, Association of Ameritech/SBC Retirees, Inc.
Election results
Several people nominated
several current board members for their current offices. And several people nominated the entire Board
to repeat.
Carole Lovell was nominated
for the position of First Vice President.
She has done a marvelous job as Membership Director, doubling the size
of AASBCR. She will continue to concentrate
on membership activities.
Gary Durochik has chosen to
not stand for Secretary again. His
opinions and counsel will be missed.
Since there was no more than
one candidate for each office, at the March Board meeting, in accordance with
Article IV, Section 9 of the Bylaws, President Bruce Beckman declared the
nominees elected by acclamation.
Meet Your Board of Directors
President Bruce
Beckman: Started
his telecom career at Western Electric in 1970 and transferred to Illinois Bell
in 1975. He remained there till his retirement in January of 2001. In 1986 he
accepted an offer to become associated with the then emerging Carrier Services
Division and remained involved in Wholesale services for the remainder of his
career. During his career with the Bell System, Bruce’s background included
stints in Public Relations, Personnel, Sales, Marketing, Directory Assistance
and Operations.
Vice President Carole
Lovell: Started with Ohio Bell in
Vice President Ray
Sternot: Began his telephone company
career as a Circuit Designer at Ohio Bell. During his career of over 32
years, Mr. Sternot held various positions in craft at Ohio Bell and management
positions in
Vice President Chet
Przybyslawski: His Bell System
career of 37 years began with Illinois Bell in various craft positions. Five
years were spent in a “management loan” assignment at the original AT&T and
Bell Labs. The final 25 years were spent
in various Information Technology positions before retiring from Ameritech in
1996.
Treasurer Ralph
Kolderup: His 32 year career with
the
From the Membership Desk
It is apparent that for us to gain
the attention of our elected officials on how they should react to pending
legislation, the stronger a voice we are the more clearly we will be heard. The
AASBCR is in the process of implementing a system that will give you access to
more easily communicate with your elected officials. With this tool, we believe
we will be more easily heard. We are hoping to share this tool with as many
SBC/Ameritech Retirees as possible via the AASBCR and we are asking for your
support.
Being a member of AASBCR
provides many benefits. Our organization is working with the executives at the
new AT&T/SBC to sustain retiree benefits and help minimize rising coverage
costs. We also work with members of Congress and organizations such as
the National Retiree Legislative Network (NRLN) to improve retiree benefits and
sustain retiree rights through Congressional action and reform. We want the new
AT&T/SBC to hear us on the issues of healthcare or pensions rather than
just push healthcare costs to retirees without any retiree input. Instead of
doing nothing or just complaining about the reduction in healthcare benefits;
increase in out-of-pocket amounts; or, the lack of pension cost-of-living
adjustments to retirees, we can choose to speak out with one loud unified
voice. The more members, the louder and more persistent the voice. With that in
mind....
All of us have some retired
friends who, like us, retired from SBC, Ameritech, or
Please provide me:
Retiree Name; what company
they retired from (if known); Address, City, State; email address (if they have
email). The retiree who provides the most names of friends who have retired from SBC,
Ameritech, or
AASBCR - C/O Carole Lovell
Email: mailto:A-A-S-B-C-RMembers@prodigy.net
Postal mail: AASBCR - C/O
Carole Lovell
Membership Questionnaire
Your Board of Directors works to represent the
membership. In order to do this
effectively, we need to know what you think – what your concerns are. Please take a few minutes to think about the
following questions and either mail or e-mail your thoughts and opinions.
E-mail to A-A-S-B-C-RMembers@prodigy.net
Mail to: AASBCR
Questionnaire
1)
As a retiree, what are
your major problems with the SBC/AT&T benefit plan?
2)
Would you have any
problem with the AASBCR publishing your name within the membership of the
Association? For instance,
3)
What do you feel the
Association should concentrate its work on:
A: Legislative
mandates to secure improved health care?
B: Pension
protection and adequate funding?
C: Shareholder
proposals?
D: Other?
4)
Would you attend a
retiree "town hall" type of meeting, if we were able to send
representatives to your area; for instance Cleveland, Columbus, Milwaukee,
Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Fort Myers, San Antonio???
5)
Would you be willing
to host a group of fellow retirees for the AASBCR Annual Meeting on June 7?
Our membership is disbursed around the country and we only have 20 telephone
ports. The call would be long distance. Please provide us with your name
so that we can send you information about the conference call. Currently we
have 2 sites reserved. Please call us by Wednesday, May 31 to reserve a
seat. In
From the Vice President -
Legislation
I have been your AASBCR VP-Legislation for the past
year. Given the changes that we’ve seen
come out with the new SBC/AT&T healthcare plan, I’m sure we all can agree
that considerable work needs to be done to maintain these benefits being that
we are in an ownership environment espoused by corporate America and the
politicians in Washington. By joining
forces with the NRLN, we’ve made some progress on pension protection and
awareness at the national level. We now
need to do the same with healthcare.
We all know that SBC/AT&T is pushing healthcare costs to
retirees rather than attempting to deal with the problem of the high costs of
healthcare directly. Clearly, as we see
most corporations in American acting, it is easier to push promised benefit
costs off on the former employee while putting on the spin of us all having to
be in an ownership [take control] society.
Yet, as a benefits user, how much control do we have relative to the
company pushing these rising costs off to retirees on a fixed pension? . As
an organization most companies today, AT&T included, cry poor when it comes
to funding earned benefits. Yet, they
think nothing of buying out a former Chairman of the Board (e.g., Dorman of
AT&T) at a ridiculous high cost to stockholders and retirees. Companies also have enough money to purchase
other companies (e.g., AT&T’s recent announcement to purchase BellSouth). Yet they don’t apparently have enough to keep
their healthcare promises to its former employees. We’ve all seen the recent
headlines on companies eliminating pensions and healthcare. By no means should we fail to mention the
ridiculously high salaries that Chairmen/CEO’s get (Ed Whitaker included) for
results that are less than optimal or significantly under-performing.
So what can we do? As
an organization, we need to become more active on multiple fronts. We need to work to bring healthcare reform to
the national level by actively working with the NRLN. We also need to have serious discussion with
AT&T management about sustaining their healthcare commitments to retirees
who in return might want to support AT&T’s proposed merger with BellSouth. But, it is clear that we can no longer stand
by and hope that AT&T will do the right thing on behalf of retirees. Perhaps AT&T has to begin seeing a bigger
picture. After all, most retirees are
stockholders and customers. Most
retirees also have families who are customers and stockholders. Most retirees are still active and can voice
their opinions. We now need to do that
in the proper forums and in different ways.
These ways might include, but should not be limited to, referendum on
changing a corporation’s by-laws or by assisting our elected officials see what
is important to retirees.
If you feel as strongly about the continued need to improve
retiree healthcare as your AASBCR officers do, you should let members of
Congress and the President know how you feel about the need to lower health care
costs and sustain employer healthcare plans at reasonable prices. You can also tell us and AT&T how you
feel about your healthcare and pension benefits and whether you are pleased
with the direction they are taking.
From time to time, we meet with AT&T management on various issues such as
healthcare and concerns that we have as an organization. As I said, we need your input. We also will be commenting on various healthcare
(and pension bills) before Congress either directly or via the NRLN. Your Congress persons and the various
committee chairpersons need to hear from you about your
position and thoughts on a particular bill.
Most of the bills currently introduced to date in the 109th
Congress are listed on our AASBCR site so you may conveniently review
them. http://www.aasbcr.org/
Paste this in your browser.
Then click on “UPDATE
TO PENDING LEGISLATION – 2/17/06” – Be sure to click on the
If enacted, several of these bills would offer improvements
to your healthcare and pension. However,
we need your help to get these bills out of committee and on to the floor of
both chambers with changes that reflect our views and objectives. Here are a
few that are on our list:
Ø
H.R.1322 calls for protection of retiree health
benefits.
Ø
S.16 and S. 334 (Bipartisan) which both call for
allowing safe re-importation of drugs
Ø
H.R.2233 and S.991 have been introduced to limit
the availability of benefits under an employer’s nonqualified deferred
compensation plans in the event that any of the employer’s defined pension
plans are subjected to distress or PBGC termination. These bills also call for more information
and pension plan disclosures.
Ø
S.608 is intended to create an independent office
in the Department of Labor on behalf of pension participants. (You may or may not remember but it was one
of Elaine Chao’s people in the Department of Labor who said that you as
retirees are no longer their constituents. Yet their published charter says
otherwise and we aim to make sure that they do look out for retirees better
than they have.)
To find your Representative, go to www.house.gov and enter your 9-digit zip code.
To find your Senators, go to www.senate.gov
and enter your state.
Click on the name for more information on each
Representative/Senator
NRLN Membership and Board Meeting
(This is a synopsis of Vice President Ray Sternot’s
report. For the full report, please
visit the AASBCR web site:
aasbcr.org)
President, Bruce Beckman and Legislative VP Ray Sternot
attended the annual National Retiree Legislative Network Membership and Board
meetings held in
DAY 1
Item 1 – Pension
Improvement Bills recently passed by the Senate (S.1783) and House (H.R.2830).
As many of you may have read in
local papers, both the House and Senate have agreed separately on a Pension
improvement bill. Now representatives of
both legislative branches must come together in a joint committee to resolve
the differences in their respective bills.
There are still many contentious issues. We feel that the Senate version of the bill
is clearly the better plan. However,
there are always concerns when bills go into committee for final
resolution. With regard to the pension
bill and specifically the cash-balance plan changes, there are companies
lobbying to add additional provisions that would water down retiree
protection. These include:
a. The
possible retro-activity of cash balance plans
b. Omitting
the addressing of the wear away issue
[this is the issue that conversions to a cash balance plan doesn’t take into
account what a retiree might have gotten at retirement under a defined benefit
plan versus what is merely computed
using a cash balance plan method. This
is something that negatively affects older workers.]
Our goal in support of NRLN will be
to point out to the conference members the need to accurately calculate
pensions, use real numbers as it pertains to asset valuation; consider the company credit rating in looking
at pension funding levels; and protect older retirees by addressing the wear
away issue and eliminating the possibility of cash balance plan
retro-activity. In addition, once we
know who the joint committee representatives will be, we will be asking you to
make sure that the final bill looks as much like the Senate bill as
possible. We do not want retro-activity
to creep into the bill or the wear away issue not being addressed in the final
bill. A legislative call to action will
be issued.
Item 2 – We also
provided the Senate Staffs that we met with our concerns. These include:
a.) Whether
pension funds should be allowed for corporate restructuring – we are strongly
opposed.
b.) Whether
pension funds should limit risky investments and include more disclosure
relative to investments – we strongly agree.
c.) Whether
there will be a more speedy disclosure of Form 5500 that provides information
on the plan funding in general – we strongly agree.
Item 3 – Healthcare –
Prescription Drug importation
Senator Dorgan’s legislative aide
discussed Senate bill S334 which addresses the drug importation issues. What became clear was that drug companies
don’t want this bill. They argue about
it being unsafe and how it will hurt drug research. This isn’t the case. There is a companion bill in the House
(HR700). Our focus on getting this bill
onto the floor and into a conference should be on the Senate side of the
bill. Clearly, there is some awareness
in Congress that prescription drugs are too costly.
Item 4 – Healthcare
Bill discussion with Karen Howard – Aide to Salazar
Senator Salazar, working with John
McCain, has initiated a ten–member bipartisan committee to do a comprehensive
analysis of healthcare (costs, delivery, ways to finance healthcare,
etc.). The commission will be one year;
look at underinsured individuals, which given the way that SBC has been pushing
costs to retirees; may soon affect many AASBCR members.
Item 5 – What else
will be done? What will be the NRLN Focus in 2006?
a. Working
toward helping get the Pension bills finalized
b. Membership
c. Proxy
proposals
d. Healthcare
legislation
e. Bringing
to light executive compensation issues
f.
Working with the
DAY 2
The second day focused primarily
on the NRLN board meeting agenda items.
I think our input was valuable and rewarding. In addition to going over the information
gleaned from the staff presentations yesterday, we discussed the following
items:
1.)
Legislative Agenda for 2006
a. Pension
law reform/finalization
b. Healthcare
benefits and affordability, including Financial Accounting Standards Board
disclosure
c. Advance
funding of retiree benefits
d. Tax
reform that helps lessen the retiree pain of healthcare costs.
2.)
Proposed By-law changes
a. I
will be working with our peer SBC retiree organizations to provide input that
we suggested to the NRLN by-law changes that allow us to have a greater say in
focus and direction of the NRLN.
Bruce and I and other members of
your board will also be actively working with our peer retiree groups (SNA-
Southern New England Tel Retiree Association; PacBell Retiree Association; and,
ACER -AT&T Concerned Employees and Retirees) to provide our input as to
some common items that can assist the NRLN achieve its objectives.
What do we need AASBCR members to
do to assist us? Provide your
input/suggestions to improve pensions and healthcare. Identify your concerns. Tell us what is troubling you as a
member. We think we know. But, we need to hear if we have it
correctly. And, we need specific issues
that we can point to.
You can e-mail me at vp2@aasbcr.org if you would like to
discuss any of these items or call me at 440-918-9645.
Ray Sternot
AASBCR – VP Legislation
Call for help
The Association of Ameritech/SBC Retirees has an active
alliance with the National Retiree Legislative Network. This network serves as
our eyes and ears for legislative matters in
If you read the newspaper or watch TV, you know that many
companies are either eliminating or restructuring pension plans to the
detriment of their employees. A recent Time magazine article aptly called it
“The Great Retirement Ripoff”.
The NRLN is deeply involved in working with our Senators
and Congressmen to formulate legislation so that Corporations can not
arbitrarily under-fund retirement plans or switch to plans less favorable to
employees as happened to AT&T employees a few years ago. While the AASBCR
financially supports the NRLN by paying a portion of your annual $25 contribution
to them, the NRLN can not sustain their work without additional financial help.
Therefore the NRLN has asked all of the affiliated associations (like the
AASBCR) to go to their membership and ask they consider NRLN voluntary direct
contributions. Because the AASBCR does not permit the disclosure of our
membership, we are asking those members who have an interest in learning more
about the NRLN to go to their website, www.nrln.org.
The work of the AASBCR would be far more difficult without the NRLN.
CAPWIZ
You will hear a lot about "CAPWIZ".
This is software that makes it easy to e-mail your elected representatives
(once you get used to it). To use it, click on the last item on the left
of the AASBCR web page ("HOW TO FIND YOUR
ELECTED OFFICIALS"). Enter your 9-digit
zip code in the first box on the left, under "Home" (with or without
the dash). Then click on the arrow to the right of that box. This
will give you e-mail access to President Bush, your two Senators, and your
Representative. Click on "e-mail" for the one you wish to
correspond with. You will find several hot topics, each with a
pre-written letter. (You may edit this any way you see fit, or delete it
and write (or copy/paste) your own letter.) The "Hand Delivered
Letter (Fee service)" option will, for a price, print your letter and it
will be hand-delivered. For most of the letters the AASBCR asks you to
send, use the "Compose Your Own Letter" option and copy/paste the
Association letter. You may modify this letter as you like, but we are
told that letter-writing campaigns are more effective if the letters stay
"on message". It is not the diversity of comments in a
multi-thousand-letter campaign that affects our representatives. It is
the volume of responses from Voters that gets their attention. Click on “Next Step”.
Fill out (or copy/paste) the Subject.
Select an Issue Area - this can be challenging. Most of our letter
writing campaigns will concern "Health" or "Senior
Citizens". DO NOT PUT YOUR NAME,
ADDRESS, OR ANY OTHER PERSONAL INFORMATION IN THE BODY OF YOUR LETTER! Choose
your closing and enter your name in the box provided. Then fill out the
rest of the information. This information is necessary to authenticate
you as a resident of your district. If you don't wish to be automatically signed up for
Congress.org To Go - My Issues and MegaVote,
uncheck those boxes. See Box 3 Capwiz·XC Message
Booster chose whether to fill in. See Box 4 Capwiz·XC
Authentication and fill in the number. Finally, click the "Send
Message" button - ONLY ONCE. If you
want to e-mail another of your elected officials, do it again. (If you
clicked the "Remember Me" button, you won't have to add all that
information again.) This also works for State and County officials, but
not at the Local area.
Yahoo Message Board
Did you know the AASBCR has a Message board? Visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aasbcr/join to join and follow the instructions. In order to join the group you will have to be approved by the group moderator. Add a sentence with your name, when you retired, and from what company – just enough for the moderator to be able to approve you. Or send an e-mail to aasbcr-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. For further assistance, please visit http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/.
You will be
able to post and receive messages on the Message Board. All we ask is that you “keep it clean” and
may have general interest. This is
intended as an informal way for us to keep connected. You should be approved within one, or at most
two, days – and probably sooner.