Doc said:
The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is also holding a hearing Tuesday on airline pensions. In Washington as on Wall Street, the stakes are high.
"In our opinion, all of the legacy carriers face a potential threat from the required payments for their underfunded pension liabilities," Calyon Securities airline analyst Ray Neidl wrote in a June 20 research note. Neidl expects that the changes will be approved by Congress.
Earlier this month, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on pension reform.
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It doesn't seem right that relief will come for the few or the one legacy carrier while the rest of us get screwed out of our retirement.
Our unions will not be able to anything about it or most likely won't even try.
[post="278230"][/post]
There are problems right now.
Todays issue of the Beaver County Times
Airways after nearly 39 years with the airline.
More than six months later, the Hanover Township resident has yet to receive a pension check, either from US Airways or the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which took over the airline's pensions in February.
He is not alone.
He said he was told by a US Airways human resources employee that about 150 baggage handlers, members of the International Association of Machinists, fell through the cracks in the transition period between US Airways and the PGBC.
Tom Miklavic, who is the assistant general chairman for IAM District 141 in Pittsburgh, the baggage handlers' group, said he's not heard complaints from other union members, except for "some hiccups in the system."
"One or two fell through the cracks," Miklavic said. If it was a wholesale problem, he said, "I would have had somebody calling me."
But Angelo Terrana, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart, R-4, Bradford Woods, said he has heard from Silvis and others left adrift during the pension transition. He wouldn't say how many others contacted the office.
"This happening to one person is one person too many - and (Silvis) is not alone," Terrana said. Because of confidentiality, he said he could address the issue only generically.
"This is obviously a burden, and it's not easy for a lot of people to go without an income for an extended period of time," Terrana said. "People are so absorbed with paperwork, they forget it impacts people's lives."
Initially, the PBGC said new retirees could expect a gap of a couple of months before their pension checks would arrive.
Now, in dealing with 2,500 US Airways claims for February and March alone, PBGC spokesman Jeffrey Speicher said these newest retirees probably won't receive their first checks until September. Although these checks will be large ones, covering months of back pension, at least six months will pass before checks can be expected to arrive.
"Asking people to go without a regular stream of income that they're expecting ... is not easy," Terrana said.
Ask Silvis and his family, wife Victoria and daughters Nicole, 15, and Jennifer, 20. Silvis said he is living in a paperwork bog, with no end in sight.
Silvis has drawn down his savings account, sold his 1997 Pontiac Grand Prix and has been left wondering whether to hire an attorney to fight his cause.
In one of 20 to 30 calls to US Airways, Silvis said he was told that the airline has no intention of paying his pension for the two months before the PBGC took over.
"They're just telling me, 'We're just not paying you for January and February,' " Silvis said. " 'The PBGC is going to pay you, and that's all you're going to get.'
"Every step along the way, I was doing what I was told by US Airways' human resources," he said.
US Airways did not return phone calls about Silvis' problem and pension issues in general.
By Silvis' calculation, US Airways owes him more than $4,200.
"I'm at a loss to justify how they're not paying it," said Silvis, who contacted Hart's office, the bank issuing pension checks for the PGBC and US Airways, his union, the company and Bankruptcy Court Judge Stephen Mitchell. He received no response from U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn Hills, but the judge forwarded Silvis' paperwork to company attorneys.
At this point, Silvis wishes he had never retired. He originally set his retirement date for Dec. 1, 2004. A lead worker on a ramp crew, Silvis decided to help with the holiday season at Pittsburgh International Airport and delayed his retirement a month.
He said he submitted paperwork as he was told to, but Miklavic said it wasn't done quickly enough.
"I can scream and holler at the company; they may want to work with me, and they may not," Miklavic said.
"Where the problem lies is he didn't get his paperwork filled out and turned in, in a timely manner," Miklavic said, not addressing Silvis' claim that he did what he was told. "If you don't fill out the paperwork, that's on the employee."
About a month lapsed after Silvis was told to resubmit his paperwork, Miklavic said.
Silvis said he was never given a deadline and overnighted his package to US Airways on Feb. 13.
Miklavic and Silvis still await a written response from the airline.
Silvis filed an appeal with US Airways' human resources department on June 7, and debates filing a lawsuit.
"That's the only thing that's left," he said, sitting in the neat kitchen of his home on Laura Drive. The perfect order of the house, pool and garage contradict his paperwork shambles.
"My life since the first of the year has been calling people on the phone and having them say no," he said. "It's like that David Spade character, sitting there saying no in a thousand ways. I think this guy on this commercial trains them, because this is all I've been told every step of the way. I've done everything they've told me to do."
"The loss of paperwork or a technical filing date should not necessarily exclude him from recouping pension money that he's owed," said Terrana, who also wants to make sure paperwork has made the leap from US Airways to the PBGC.
The PBGC has not experienced "any great increase" in calls, said Speicher, the agency's spokesman. The PBGC hires extra workers when assuming a large pension like US Airways and works on claims in the order they are received.
How quickly the applications are processed depends, Speicher said. "Not everyone fills out a complete application." Some don't determine their beneficiaries. Many opt to wait for the actuary to compute the dollar difference among their choices.
Still, Speicher said, those who retired in January, before the transition, "should be getting checks now." Those who already had been retired, like Miklavic, had no lapses between checks.
"When I finally do get a check in the mail," Silvis said, "how much it's going to be, I have no clue."
