Thread regarding Verizon Communications Inc. layoffs

OP- You're very misguided. The company is nowhere close to Chapter 11. While the company does have debt, it's only 118B (significantly down from 135 after the Vodafone purchase). From a debt perspective, that's not much more than say ATT with 124B. The company needs to reduce operating costs like the other telecoms. ATT is actually RIF'in employees at a faster rate than Verizon. Does that mean ATT is close to Chapter 11 as well?

@N4VKqae-ymh I whole heartedly agree with you and wish you success and have given the cause support , however I feel VZ will win with the current court. The company has gotten away with a real crime here. I personally have given up on taking the annuity. I will be taking mine in cash. I feel I have amassed enough as of now to live well. I simply don't trust the system in the hands of Republicans . They somehow or other have bedazzled a whole class of people to eat their own until only the rich will have any assets of consequence. The original poster as well as N4VKqae-yym has no clue on how it works. PBGC coverage is not optional or subject to current politics. It is the law. I invite them to visit the PBGC website and research the coverage we have, ironicly it is coverage the company pays for with premiums. Everyone in a ERISA covered pension is due up to the maximum payout whether the plan in question defaults due to corporate malfeasance or ineptitude. They also don't seem to understand that in order to use chapter 11 the company must be truly in bankruptcy. This would mean all sorts of financial devastation along the way including a near complete loss of shareholder value. We are nowhere near this. Anyone of us currently employed can cash out long before such a thing can happen. I imagine it would be a slow bleed to get there, probably at least several years. The one true bad part of the PBGC payout is it does not recognize early retirement so one would not get paid until traditional retirement age. This fact is why I will be taking my cash when things start to look bad,until then I will continue to happily earn pension credits.

Why should I care about Verizon retirees, Pundt v. Verizon federal litigation?

This is a good question, especially if you are a retiree who came out of the CWA or IBEW.

In 2012, over 41,000 Verizon management pensions were transferred to Prudential Insurance Company and converted into group annuities. That is what started the ruckus in the first place.

Since your pension is still intact and coming monthly from Verizon, why should you be concerned about what happened to a bunch of management pensions? After all, your pension wasn’t affected, was it? The answer is a loud: “Yes it was!”

Verizon paid Prudential around $8.5 billion to transfer $7.5 billion of management pensions. The $1 billion “sweetener” came from the pension assets remaining with Verizon and covered Verizon’s costs and expenses. In other words, Verizon took this money from YOU!

The retirees sued and took it all the way to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in favor of Verizon, finding that no “harm” was done to retirees. What happened next is astonishing.

Overcoming odds of less than one percent, the Association of BellTel Retirees led litigation was granted a Writ of Certiorari by the United States Supreme Court!

That means the highest court in the land threw out the 5th Circuit’s ruling and told them to think again. The U.S. Supreme Court asked the 5th Circuit to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate whether there was in fact “harm” done to retirees.

This is important to everyone with a Verizon pension. Why? Because your pension is expected to be next up on the conversion block. Verizon has demonstrated that it desperately wants to get out of the pension and benefits business and right now one of the few things that can stop them is the United States Supreme Court. Our Association has worked long and hard to get to that point and we are the only ones fighting, let me repeat the only ones fighting!

When Verizon gets around to dealing with your pension and transfers it to a group annuity owned by an insurance company, you will lose all protections from ERISA, the federal law passed in 1974 and signed by President Gerald Ford to protect the retirement assets of Americans with pension plans from the private sector.

Once your pension is converted you will lose the “insurance protection” provided by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, along with losing all uniform protections from creditors, and ERISA’s fiduciary standards.

We need your help. Now that you realize that this is an important battle that you cannot simply watch from the sidelines, we need you to get involved for your own future. We need to put pressure on state legislatures to pass laws protecting retirees in pension de-risking transfers.

There have been a lot of articles written about this subject both in this newsletter and in the Senior Advocate from our sister organization, ProtectSeniors.Org. You can download those newsletters from our website, if you don’t already have them.

We have to do this together. In the coming months you will be asked to make a simple call or write a short letter using the website from ProtectSeniors.Org. We can’t do it without an army of fellow retirees and this advocacy does not come free. We need your support. We will “carry the ball.” We just need the handoff from you. Stay tuned and please act now to become a staunch advocate and protector of your own retirement future.

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@N4VKqae-oqy....Thank You , we must TEACH the TEACHABLE and to H**L with the rest....Personally I think the OP is a Basking Ridge troll trying to get a feel for what we think so he/she can report back to the "GOD-POD"

Just because the pbgc covers it doesn't mean you will get it. Often times there is a reduced payout up to a Max. They have to do this due to the fact that the pbgc can't handle large pensions and needs this to remain solvent. It depends on how fully funded the pension is

Nothing Verizon does would surprise me. They would cut off their proverbial nose to spite their face! They are bleeding money and would probably do anything to stop it.

There is nothing to fear. You speak ignorantly. The PBGC covers pensioners in full up to a inflation adjusted max. Virtually every VZ pension falls under the max, only Director level or above would get a haircut. What you speak of is pure fantasy. The destruction in shareholder value would not be tolerated by the moneyed class and besides that the financial state of the corporation is nowhere near the dire state you claim it to be in. The airlines where truly bankrupt. Your hypothetical scenario is nothing more than the fantasy of a sick mind.