ourselves and say those officers, those soldiers, they did to keep for themselves. >> what are you doing now? is there an archaeological dig that you are working on right now or this fall? >> i am doing it to things right now. in the summertime i am digging at fort william henry ducks in lake george new york and fort william henry is the slate of the last so for anyone that has read james kimber cooper's famous novel seeing the famous movie with louis that is the fort we are currently being through the community college and through the state university. ..

they're digging up a storm right now. >> thank you so much for your time. >> it's good to be here. >> and non book tv, ellen schultz argues many large companies and plundered employee pension plans. see also talked about the crisis this is created. this is just under an hour. >> some years back i went out to iowa to meet with a group of retired meatpackers. i don't know what your image of retired meatpackers is, but i

suspect most people think there are a pretty tough lot. well, i went out to this family diner on the edge of town near bowling alley. the guys in their lives would get together every month so over the special. they would say a prayer. there would read off a list of the people who died that month if any, and they would get tips its setting, mostly social. one of the things that kept coming up with them was the struggle there were having because their health benefits had been cut. now, these were benefits they had been promised decades ago. to give you an example, one of the fellows there had started hat hormel meatpacking plant right out of high school in the 30's. like a lot of the guys there he left to go to the second world war, survived, and came back. he worked another 34 years of the plan. retired to enjoy his remaining wins in life.

laden was secured. he had a pension the air and, he and retiree health benefits. these guys, there were millions of these guys out there and women. and maybe it's trillion dollars in deferred pay. essentially that's what the prison is, deferred compensation. they'd and pensions, health care. in many cases that were promised death benefits and life-insurance. these are not gratuities. this was paid. they retired and then starting in the 90's mostly they started getting notices telling them, gee, rerelease sorry, but we can't support -- afford to pay these benefits. and they pretty much excepted that the companies are struggling. the questions and co's sears retirees are offensive. it's something that seems counter. you just can't question. about the time i was meeting with these guys in washington there was another meeting going on.

experts are getting together to talk about a terrible pension problem of their or having. the big problem was there was too much money and pension plans. now, this might seem surprising now with all the talk about underfunded pensions, but at that time in the late 90's there was a quarter of its trillion dollars in surplus assets and pension plans. as to hundred $50 billion. what was the problem? well, from the company's point of view the problem was that it was just a shame, a shame that this money was locked up. the company could use it for something. that is because the law had been enacted back in 1974 this said you have to fund their pension plans, and you have to keep your hands of the money. now, congress enacted this law because through the 50's and 60's there have been many abuses. there were famous debacle's like studebaker, which went bankrupt and people lost a lot of their pensions. congress put this law in place that said if you offer pensions, which, of course, is voluntary

you have to fund it, keeping hands off, and let it go. this law works so well that by the 1980's with there were huge surpluses. companies like ge, which to this day has never put a cent more intense pension plans, not since the 1980's. well, you had this growing amount of surplus and then along came a bunch of pension raiders. the famous ones who saw these companies with fat pension plans and said let's kill the plan off. it will take over the company, and we will be able to take the surplus. that was going on. you probably heard about this at the time. lots of companies are being taken over, the pension plan was being killed, and many retirees are losing their pension to be congress stepped in and said you can't do that. for going to put an excise tax on this. you can't take the surplus. they put that in place. before the ink was dry the

lawyers and consultants were working together to work out how you can get around this and convenience because they still wanted the surplus. so what people didn't realize was that through the 90's employers had developed a number of ways to tap the surplus assets. one of the most common was during restructuring. they had hundreds of thousands, if not millions of older workers in their fifties, early 60's, but then that at the company's decades. they were expensive, in their peak pension and years, and this was the population you wanted to get rid of. they used billions of dollars in surplus to help finance restructuring. they didn't use it to pay cash severance because in not allowed to do that. instead they called it an incentive benefit of some kind. for example, atlantic use $3 billion to get 25,000 of its management employees to leave.

you had a number of companies doing this, billions of dollars are going out of the plants. this was seven the company cash because they didn't have to come into the corporate coffers to pay for it. they just used pension assets. meanwhile, u.s. companies like dupont which it pioneered this technique of taking money out of the plans to pay for retiree health benefits. again, this save the company's cash because they did have to reach into the coffers to pay this for the health care. so you have two things going on, companies taking money out to pay for the restructuring and money to pay for the retiree health. that's a lot of money going out the door. to give you an example of how much, bell atlantic would stick 3 billion been merged with gte and then became verizon. subsequently the company to 5 billion more out of the plant in the 2000's, again to pay for restructuring. unfortunately this tendency, this practice was very popular

with companies that were in financial trouble, so take the airlines, united and delta, usair. after the september 11th disaster there were going downhill, and they tap the pension plan a number of times it's a billions out to pay the lay off people. there were using it for that. gm, ford, delphi, the spinoff. again, there were also taking of billions even as they were headed into disaster. so meanwhile, as this was happening, there were yet other waste companies were pulling billions out. the other ways, harder to find out about. but there were doing was selling pension assets because in this world of mergers and acquisitions they realized you could actually monetize the assets and pension plans. the way to do it is let's say you're selling a unit, you send over 25,000 retirees and employees. you send over the pension to pay for it, but some the little

extra, maybe a hundred million. the buyer pays you for that company's you may be $0.7 on the dollar. you get 70 million. you're happy, you get 70 million for that. the buyer is happy because he does something with 10 million. he paid 70 million for something worth a hundred million, so they're happy. he's not happy? the pension plan is all was well founded. he take this strategy, and there are many permutations, especially the defense contractors, raytheon, ge. you do this in the number of times and no one is watching it. it is not disclose the new usually and you have just buckets of money going out the door for the sort of thing. meanwhile, there is even another where there were taking money out. this was to pay for executive parish's seven the number of companies. in some cases it was a minor amount like royal some alliance which was an answer that decided

to lay off a bunch of people. by the way, we're going to give the age our folks in the executive some extra money out of the regular plan. now, this wasn't really a legal thing to do but thanks to a loophole that they developed their were taking money that was set aside for regular employees and putting it over on the executive side. so this was going on as well. so you have all these things happening. there were trying assets out of the plan. people are really paying attention because the bull market is going on. a lot of money, the outset was rising. people were not aware of. but, employers realized this was a really good gimmick. to be able to use the pits and plant. so they wanted to actually continue to be able to do that, but the way they were able to postpone the impact was to cut benefits because if you cut benefits that's more money it stays in the plan that you can

pull out a newsletter for other things like paying executives are selling it. so you had in the 90's these waves of pension cuts that companies like ibm and at&t, they are the large companies. again, large all the work forces in their peak points to nine years. now, people didn't know their pensions are being cut because the employers use strategies that were very hard for the regular person to perceive to be is to give you an idea if anyone figured it out it was an engineer because engineers are very numbers oriented. it would get all the plan documents and look and say, well, how is my pension changing? you would know from what the employer soldier because they said we are improving the plan. were going to get rid of this old-fashioned pension plan and give you a better one that's going to be portable off. it will work like a 401k. it said this mysterious formula

that your average pay, we're going to instead give you something that looks like an account. you can take it with you when you go. so, this was going on for years before finally enough people figured out what was happening was this formula was a way to hide the fact that your pensions are being cut by as much as 20 to 50 percent, especially for older people. being cut in two ways. kind of not growing as fast enough for a lot of older folks the pensions were frozen all together, sometimes for years. and if you think it was a little harsh to say the company sick, i would like you said cigna, which found itself in federal court over this very issue when its retirees sued because, as it turns out, cigna had a number of documents in which the detailed their efforts to keep these practices hidden. they didn't want to provoke an employee backlash, so the idea was we just let them know the

benefits of being cut. they celebrated after words, congratulating themselves on how effective this was because the employees didn't notice. so there was an element of deception throughout this process. so what you're having are all these companies getting benefits so they could pull money out and contribute to pull money out. there was another reason that there were cutting benefits even as they had the surpluses. there were doing it because there were changes in accounting rules. this may sound incredibly dull and hard to grasp, but all you really need to know is this, when these accounting rules changed in the early 90's it said the companies, if you're going to promise pensions we have this big liability, you have to put it on your bucks. now, a pension is a debt, so it's like putting a great big debt on the books. companies did this and, naturally, they were said at the time because who likes to have a

big dent on the books. but secretly i think there were thrilled. what happens when you take away some of the debt, well, the kind of day you generate gains. these gains go into profit, it's a slight profit from selling trucks of software. so what happened was suddenly you had this trillion dollars owed to retirees, pensions and a retiree health care, also life insurance and other things, and the plants became cookie jars for companies. they realize, if you can get the benefits, even if they are costing you anything, even if you are really planning to pay them out anyway, if you cut them you will get not only to keep the money, which is wonderful, what you will be able to generate profits to boost earnings. so was going on in the 90's and into the 2000's is billions of dollars were being converted as a profit for companies. it was going straight into an

account. some companies and some quarters, it was the only income they had. so as this was going on you can see that the plans were morphing into profit. the resources cash and earnings. now, unfortunately for retirees and employees there was yet another thing going on at the time. this coincided with a shift in executive pay. instead there of just giving executives great base salaries companies were changing to a more performance based for tax reasons. so a lot of executive compensation now was being tight said earnings. you know, if the stock went up your bonus. suddenly executive pay had a direct connection to earnings. of course executives that were agreed letting these moves to cut benefits, whether, you know, deliberately or not were

bursting their own pay. we have heard plenty about how pay for executives is done so dramatically over the past 15-20 years. but what was also happening was that as the pay group companies were deferring it. so companies were in sicily putting their executive pay on a big credit-card. is that different from a pension liability. says companies cut pensions for lots of people the pensions for executives are growing. not just the pensions, but their pay. the pay was a liability, and the pensions or liability. i've seen some companies where the executive liabilities are here and the regular liabilities of here. this constant change. it's tough going the other way. it's going this way. people didn't notice that a large chunk of pension obligation is for a executives biggest companies can put all these numbers together. even if you look in the 10k with

you people do, you will see a big number, and you will listen, while comeuppance as a costly. you have companies like gm and ibm. everyone sang our pensions are costly. but some companies the big cost was for the executives, and it still is because it is growing. so with these trends you had is almost unstoppable machine with the pensions and health care we're just waiting to be turned and companies could control when there were taking money out and control when they were cutting, and this process enables them to use the plans is sicily to help manage earnings because if you need to hear our earnings target at $0.2 a share you know exactly how much you need to get on the retiree side to get that $0.2 a share. companies have great control over it because they can change. vacancies' discount rate, number of other assumptions to make the death of upper down.

so this is been going on, and it explains a lot of what was happening to retiree plans. and where it became really tragic is with retiree populations because we have seen how retirees often very helpless in this process the companies were moving retirees around. if they sold the unit are bought the unit because retirees have become like a resource companies. they were like a portfolio. you had the debt which is what is owed to them and you had the asset, which is the money in the pension plan and sometimes in these retiree health care trust. debts and assets, and with this combination portfolio if you are the buyer now that you have this portfolio of retirees your incentive now is to try and monetize that some way. so if you want to get the benefits you're going to get some profit out of it. so perhaps the company that

oppressed me was the most aggressive ability to do this was listen to, which was the at&t spin-off. at&t spun off all of its western electric, bell labs, and a lot of at&t retirees in to listen back in and late 90's. lisa started out with a hundred and 30,000 retirees. it also started out with more than enough money to pay for every single one for both the health care and pensions because they got that, too. but over the years they started to continually cut retiree benefits. they cut it bit by bit here and there, union, salaried. everyone was getting hit. by doing that they were keeping a whole the money which was boosting their earnings. that was one company where in many quarters the only income was from retiree benefit cuts. now, this was it an equal pain

situation. to give you an example, one of the more obvious cuts that listen did was to cut the death benefit. it's older retirees we promised you or your predecessor companies a promise you this benefit. maybe they promised to deal in 1950 are 60 or 70, whenever. it's going to be the equivalent of your final year's salary. a lot of people counted on this. there were expecting that there would have 30,000, 40,000, whenever this final salary had been. so well listen did was to tell people we can't afford to pay that. i know that your prior employer promise that to you, but we just can't afford it. so they cut the death benefit. people sort of accepted it. they weren't happy. they figured of course. struggling to money to but the

bullet. the very same year they also paid out 400 million in bonuses. so you have 400 million being cut for retirees california million going into bonuses. so this process of cutting retiree benefits and increasing executive benefits was a parallel process. what might surprise people is the links to which companies have gone to try and finance the executive benefits. one of the things they were doing was using loopholes to cap the regular pension plan to take money added to pay for executives. this is been going on at many of the major companies, and is still going on. it's contrary to the intent of congress, which says if you have a regular pension plan you have to treat everyone the same. you can have a special deal where someone can come in and get another hundred thousand of it. so this continues to go one.

meanwhile, in another more colorful effort to finance executive pay what i was surprised to find was that the companies were taking out billions of dollars in life insurance on their workers. there were using the policies as giant tax shelters that money into it. it would grow tax-deferred, and then ultimately when the retirees were employees or x employees died the death benefit goes to the company. now, some people heard about this back in the 90's because it was going on then. many have this in the stops, but actually it didn't. actually increased. companies have continued to buy billions of dollars in life-insurance of the employees, and the biggest buyers these days of the banks who were buying billions during the sub prime crisis because banks executive pay, of course, bigger than anything else out there.

there are these portfolios of life insurance on workers that could boggle the mind. you may wonder how your employer or former employer keeps track of when you die, it's simple. it just like the social security death index the comes at a rebought. they do a run, it all the social security numbers, figure out who died and put in the claims. said this is just to give you an idea of the kinds of things company said been dealing with the plants. the effect of this, of course, is to constantly put pressure on the retiree. it is to create an impression that the plans are desperately expensive. that explains to retirees what they don't want to continue to pay the benefits. the plans continue to be profitable to employers. a lot of the pensions now are frozen.

verizon, dupont. many of these companies. ibm. they have frozen the plan. there are not crying for anyone anymore. they reached the point where the markets went down and there wasn't enough surplus assets anymore to protect the plan. did become underfunded. this was not an accident. it wasn't something that had to happen. the plan said big surpluses another underfunded. companies continued to lobby for the ability to take more money out of the plans for these various purposes, usually explaining that it's good for retirement security, that they have this, you know, flexibility. but it continues to have an affect on retirees and employees. continue to protect their ability to take these assets out

companies have been very aggressive in the court system with finding ways to fight retirees the title fight back. you've seen many cases that end up in the court, both over pension cuts which have been challenged by many retirees. retiree health care cuts. companies that have been extraordinarily aggressive with techniques such as suing retirees, especially if their union retirees because they have a contract. if you have a contract it's a little tougher for the company to just say we're going to discontinue coverage. so what they have done is they will sue a retiree, get him into court before a judge has some rulings in the past. they try and argue to the judge. you really need to cut the benefits because they're very expensive. a company can survive without it.

and in some cases they have used arguments like that, yesterday we promise lifetime benefits. we didn't mean your lifetime. we met the life of the contract. so this actually worked with some judges. people lost their benefits. so if you feel somewhat beleaguered, this just gives you a backdrop as to what is been going on. with that i invite your questions because i suspect they might have some thoughts about some of this. anybody? yes. >> i'm wondering if -- you know, you mentioned that this is contrary to the intent of congress. this is not what they met when they passed and had sarah move forward. there were trying to protect the plan participants. d you have been a sense as to why congress has enacted to

clarify either the long war frozen rolls that would prevent these kinds of practices? >> i think that there has been such a strong argument made to congress by employers and the retirement in the street that these loopholes need to exist. minute, they don't call them loopholes, but these practices need to exist in order for the companies to maintain flexibility. this always seems to resonate if you go to congress and say, look, don't finance. don't have burdensome regulations because if you don't let us pull money out when we needed will put more money and when we need to, when we want to then we just can't have these plans of all. that usually is a very effective argument to congress, even though it's not actually true. i hope that helps. >> it doesn't feel good. i understand what you're saying, but it doesn't feel good.

>> yes. >> can you talk a little bit about what kind of research went into your book as far as what documents you looked at and are the same documents available to retirees to dig into? >> yes. the only way you can dig into this is the documents because it saw something that employers a going to be discussing if you call them up on the phone. i was initially stymied myself because i couldn't understand why companies are cutting benefits when they have billions of dollars in surplus. it just it makes sense. what led me down the path to try to figure it out was when ibm cut its plan and was telling people, it's a better plan. we have a better plan. there were telling shareholders, it's going to save as 200 million. i didn't understand what the man by that because what most people i assume that there were talking about cash savings, which the warrant.

there were talking about this accounting effect. they were reducing their liability by 200 million. when you do that, as 200 that would balance your profits either immediately or overtime. so the only way to see this happening is if you go and to the annual reports, the ten case, which have these been some footnotes which include a lot of these numbers that so that shot -- sizable liability in the different assumptions there using the calculated. that can give you an idea, and it's really the on a place you can go for this. yes. >> from at&t. we just had our case gets to the appeals court in philadelphia, and we lost. it was just like you described. the engineers, they said this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. yet more choice. >> with company? >> at&t.

>> and some -- you know, i was complaining or voicing my, you know, distress that a company meeting. a couple years later with three years later somebody came back to me and said, you know, i have to apologize. back when you talk to at that town meeting and said don't do this, i was looking at my love some and i thought it was a lot of money. he was like, it hasn't grown. and guess my point is, do you have a comment? among all the other things that justice must not case they said that they let 18 sea off because they said, well, you didn't need to tell them there was a cut in benefits, less they clearly didn't tell us because that would have been used. that is what the judge said.

>> did you have any comment of the at&t case? thank you very much. >> and actually seen a lot of examples of this rare companies have resisted making clear disclosures on the grounds that it would confuse people if you gave them too much information. now, there is a law. a section under pension loss but says that a significant cut in benefits must be disclosed. but as yet seen with companies like cigna there are ways around it, like just ignoring it or giving people a piece of paper that says your plan is changing these wastes. by the way, to 048 supplies. that is a company that complies with the requirements for disclosure, but it actually doesn't. in my book i talk about sessions were actuaries which discuss how you can avoid providing disclosure. you know, they said, you can say

things a changing. you can refer to a in, but you don't have to use the magic words, your benefits of being cut. so just don't use those magic words. so the disclosure issue was clearly at play in a lot of the pension conversions, and get another one that you raised as well, the lump-sum payout because a lot of companies at this time began offering lump-sum to people saying, well, with these new plants and can give you a lump sum. more moderate, portable. that is the way these pensions are better for a portable work force. the problem with that, of course, is the work force was a more mobile. the population they were trying to get rid of is definitely not mobile. people in the 50's were trying to get to a point where the pension was building to an adequate level. so one of the techniques to get people to agree to leave was to say, you know what, if you leave tennis retirement window will

give you a little extra pension and would give it to you in a lump sum. you can't take it with you, invested, by talk about a franchise, whenever. people very often were dazzled by what looked like a large sum of money. the problem was that if you give out a lump-sum you can get people less pension than they ever earned. now, normally it's against the law, pretty clear underpins a law that if you give someone less pension and they have earned you are violating the anti cut back rule. that's clear, but here is where lump-sum to make it possible. if you give someone a lump-sum of 300,000, and the person is actually an the benefit worth 400,000, well, if they choose to take the lump-sum not knowing that they should have been given 400,000 then they are essentially getting their own benefit, ceasing to cut their benefit. legally that is owed works. so you had a lot of people

seeing lump-sum dollars, the engineers. they usually figure f, but they see this big pot of money and they would take it and run, not realizing that there were cutting 20 percent or as much as, you know, another 30 percent off of the pension. that also was the disclosure issue. that has to the case you're referring to, that has happened with a lot of the suits over the pension changes. alleging age discrimination. there were two reasons for that. one was underpinned sell-off we cannot have a declining rate of a cruel. that is a complicated phrase that no one understands, but in a nutshell it says the you can't have a pension get smaller overtime by a certain way. these changes actually did that. when this debt to federal courts and judges said, yeah, this is clearly a violation.

other judges said kamal well, you know, why should the pension law applied to these plans? a littler 401 k. why should this law applied. actually, that succeeded in some circuits. the other element that has always bothered me more than that is that this practice of freezing all the workers' pensions also in a deceptive way because people didn't know the prices are being frozen, and the way that works is when you converted the plan, let's say a traditional pension, you know, it takes years of service and multiplies it by your average pay. let's say that the -- the present dollars, $500,000, so that 500,000 represents your 20,000, for life starting at age 65. so that is a finite amount, 400.

what they did for some people, a lot of people a level was when they change the plan. companies like at&t, as you know, for some people that would take as long as 13 years. i talked to obama and who was at cigna. she actually was in the pension area, so this made it a little more ironic. her pension was cut like that,

and she had no idea and so she ran and set up fellow executive at a going away party for someone. she said if you knew how much your pension had been cut you would be sick. she said among well, frankly i was sick when i figured it out because for her it would have been a pension cut for the rest of her career. people didn't pick up on that, definitely. they didn't understand that just the older people were being frozen. you may ask yourself, how can it be legal the u.k. have all the old people be affected by cuts in nighter grip people? well, that is the magic pencil loss. this whole concept call where away has been banned under congress. it can happen any more going for it, but everything that took place up to the time the largest two years ago is deemed legal. so congress finally caught up

with it and said we are calling to let you do that. sorry for you folks. it's kind of too late. >> the thing that also really got me when they first did this, they didn't get much publicity. i think it's legal, but it's morally wrong. when we had our traditional pension you multiplied a percent on years of service for anybody here recently making 40,000, some make a hundred thousand, somebody making 200,000. when at&t change did they put and the in the curve and said, okay, you're going to get half the rate up to the social security rate base and double the rate over the social security weight. the same amount of money, didn't put more money and. i just, wanted to say that. you know, so is doing what

you're saying. they got a pile of money and they are stealing. >> yes? >> i think you are saying many people didn't know. they were unaware of this change. i think that says something in terms of retirees of the past where more trusting. i think that's the message going forth, you know, i don't think we can have cussed anymore with companies, and that think as retirees we have got to be very proactive in this area to protect our earned benefits. your comments. >> i think that when you're looking at a trillion dollars there is always going to be a number of people in the group that i interested in participating in that trillion dollars. so for people to just assume that they don't have to pay attention to what's happening to their benefits is now leave. there are so many forces a work

that would like to manage that money, take a bit of the money. at forget to mention the other way that the assets were paid out of the plan. they could use the assets also to pay the actuaries and the lawyers who. no way to pay that, -- mission that, but it's probably fairly significant. >> to things. number one, i read recently a survey of employers stand by one of the major compensation and benefits consulting firms that show the trend of companies dropping health care for retirees. we have also seen data from the pbgc about the dramatic drop in the number of defined benefit plans that exist anymore. given those two scenarios and what you found, what the implications going forward for baby boomers in their pensions and their health care in their post-retirement life?

>> well, what you say about retiree health and the companies dropping it, you'll see that that is not completely true. you will find that companies are dropping him if for salaried employees, but it's tougher to joppa before impact of the bargains employees because there are contracts that are tougher to get around. you have to use of the strategies like suing them in a pro-business jurisdiction. so the pattern we seen is that the first people to go a salaried. this happened with unisys employees, any number of other employees where his salary folks were first word of the door with promises of retirees health care and then low and behold the year so later, we can't afford that. the retirees have seen, their lisa been doing a steeply, incredibly steeply. at some companies actually one reason there going and so

steeply is in because the actual costs are going up because that is the other thing the companies and not really care about. their costs are spiralling to read years ago most of the companies put caps on what they would spend. they knew there would never spend more the next dollars for a population. people can get as old, sick as it possibly can. the company protected from that. what happened is once the kappas reist all the costs get passed on, so in the salary groups yet people that hit that. the costs go up. people who can afford it or have a spouse with coverage of the plan because they can't spend thousand dollars a month. what remains are older and sicker people who have no other options. this creates a classic death spiral where you have increasingly costly groups. this actually benefits companies because the more people who drop out, well, that's people they don't have to pay for it.

another way that i have seen -- another factor in increasing its costs is that companies can charge salary people more than some of them due to subsidize what they have to pay for the collectively bargained. don't blame the unions for this. this is the company saying, well, if we can get out of pain the union guys were going to charge the salary guys more and use that excess amount to pay so we don't have to pay. of course this has a fine nightline. elster to drop out. we enjoy it will last. the answer to your question, it is unlikely the we're going to see the same kind of program exists for people. >> there retiree program, and the minister and the union, so we're all getting treated the same way. a lawyer starting to see, especially at the risk of losing our health care because it's nothing like them to protect retirees from loss of health

care. so we know we are at risk that the blow the company. at its performance it could decide to drop or cut health care costs which is done. we will no longer have stalls and coverage. any portion supported by the company will be in a group. we're starting to see some of that. since the law was supposed to cover retiree benefits. including health care. they succeeded in making the argument that health coverage was an of vested benefit like incense. they are allowed to change it. even if they had promised it, as many did in writing, they prevailed in court because they put a little sentence, in tiny

print somewhere in the document people had no idea this existed and to know that was what mattered. instead they believe the hand as the companies give them, they show people that they talk to his city going to have this. not realizing how flimsy that promise was. yes. >> i appreciate your comments. even though it does raise my blood pressure listening to you, i was -- my group was included in your letter example there. the company promises from hundred 70 years. lo and behold that little clause buried 300 pages and that chinese print of the whole book put is what the federal judge. >> with company are you with? >> john deere.

>> oh, yes. >> and as far as organized labor, there was a larger speaking voice that any salary group except for salaried unions which are ready. >> they do. actually what has been interesting is seeing how beleaguered they are as well. whether it's steelworkers groups, any number of them in manufacturing i constantly fighting these brush force with the company's because companies use a variety of tactics which i mentioned in my butt, ways to try and get around those contracts they made. the star is example i thought was this midwestern company a major actress. they really think hard about how they can get data paying these benefits. they came up with a variety of tactics. one was to exaggerates the cost and tell people it was really

really costly and may be the union would agree to give them some concessions. the other way was to up create a unit and sped off and have it go bankrupt and then, of course the retiree health care would be wiped out. the other was what they called creeping take place. it works like this. you make little tiny cut one year. maybe you raced into by $5 a month, something like that. you do a couple of these and a few years later you cut everything or make a big cat, and if they fight back in court you then say, well, look. here's a precedent. you obviously accepted these cuts made. so passively you have agreed to this. that worked in a number of venues. this particular company, it did all these things. every single tactic over the years, and the retirees what's bit by bit, although because of

the steelworkers' union trying to fight to protect it many of them were actually able to hold on, but other companies, the retirees lost in many cases. >> the loyalty that people felt toward their companies, the company stick advantage of them. doing a bit by bit and then using in the long run against the retiree groups in the china fight it. >> well, one of the tactics of failed to mention was dragged up the litigation as long as possible because there will give upper die. in fact, they do. in the book had mentioned a group of retirees with gencorp put its was the predecessor of general tire. this group of retirees saw their pension -- retiree health care cut. they get together and hired a lawyer and sued. it took so long.

they had to give the court. the judge would save of get a broader group of people. one by one they were just dropping off until there were a few of the original group left. so that has been a successful technique. >> i know that over the years real loss in problems of the pension. especially here, we lobbied heavily for the two dozen pages and protection act, which had been nullified many of the other issues that went on. shortly after that the following year there was a ruling the was done the marlins said, well, the law wasn't necessarily -- i'm intimate made it very gray said that, again, the corporations have the leeway. also now that we are -- we know what to look for and can become aware of it we also, you know, try to phase it in litigation.

it's very difficult. the average retiree to do anything about all the things you're talking about, plan unselling a south set -- >> you know what, people are pretty helpless. the only way have any leverage is to come together on an issue is a senior group to with the bankruptcy issue. a horrible situations we have seen where companies stop contributing to their pension plans to my airlines for example, usair. the plans become less and less well funded. then the company's only to throw them bankruptcy. it dump it on the pbgc which is the federal this answer. the problem is when the plan is very underfunded. there are enough profits to pay out full benefits. people can lose some of the benefits, especially people and the higher income ranges with the pilots. pilots were just devastated.

they would lose up to 80 percent in some cases of the pension because of some rather odd parks and along. they also lose of a supplemental savings. i saw pilots were missing pilots in the bucket when from having that common income of around 800 a month, now living on $95 a month. pretty perverse. this sensation continues to a exist. private equity firms. it's no different than the raiders of the 80's. as a different way to do it. go in and buy a company. the plan is overfunded, great. you kill it. or you know it, use the surplus. later you can kill it. or if its really unhealthy you just stop the chair being too right, let it sink, go to bankruptcy court and say, guys, we can't possibly go for bankruptcy with this horrible liability. the judges are easily swayed by this argument.

tragically for retirees there not first in line. the creditors, other creditors make fun of them. they get paid before the retirees. the pitching distance, retirees a left with a fraction of a pension. the shareholders are better off, the executives and creditors are better off. just to get a flavor back last year the gao can now with the report and as they looked at ten of the larger companies bankruptcy's in the past five years. they found that all these companies which included airlines, polaroid cameras to mothers, the company spent 350 million pain execs in the run-up to the bankruptcy. suggested a few short years before bankruptcy when they're not putting money in the pension plan 350 million was going out to executives at these companies. so it would be probably a good idea if there was something that halted this process are made it

tougher for companies to dump the pensions. >> tying the break, the hospitality break. if you have some other questions and shares of the -- >> very inflammatory what you're saying. who'd you think the next step will be? you hiring person protection? are you expecting something in terms of company a retiree response? >> what a recommend -- >> you know, none of this is the price to employers. reporting and aspects of this of the past decade, and everything have reporter ron has been bombed by them, and they have all had up to the to directly or to challenge. there have been no corrections, and they can challenge it. the numbers all the filings, it's the facts. so it's not like this will come as a big shock to them. it might come more as a shock to

the general public. it would be surprised to hear some of it. >> let's give him hand. [applause] at manhunts. >> you are watching book tv on c-span2, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> so, my good friends, this is not just another straightforward chronological biography of davy crockett cradle to grave. nor does it focus just on that one slice from the big occupied, the alamo. there is much more to crack in the last few weeks of his life. it sat a regurgitation of the many myths from many, many myths and total lies perpetuated by cracking over the years. this is a book for people, it's just if in

letting the jury tour at least as much can be uncovered about both the historical and the fictional bracket and how that's too often become one. hopefully readers will gain some new historical insights into the actual man and how he captured the imagination of his generation and later ones as well sun now a few spoonfuls from crockett, the line of the west. the first graph or to from my preface the of the day the crack he was first and foremost a three-dimensional human being. a person with somewhat exaggerated hopes and will check fierce, the man who had come as we all do, both good points and

bad points. he was somewhat idiosyncratic, the best of often unusual views, prejudices and opinions that govern how just a live this life. crack it could be calculating and self aggrandizing, but also a valiant and indeed resource will as anyone who run the american frontier. as a man he was both authentic and contrived. he was wise in the ways of the wilderness and the most comfortable when deep in the woods on a high. yet he often held his own in the halls of congress. a fact that distinguished him from so many other frontiers. remarkably he enjoyed fraternizing with men of power and prestige in the fancy parlors of philadelphia and new york. crockett was like none other, 19th century enigma. he fought under andrew jackson and the ruinous indian wars, all

the later to become jackson's bitter foe on the issue of indian -- the issue of removal of indian tribes and their homeland. crockets contradictions extended beyond politics. he had only a few months of formal education, yet he read of it and the bard. he was neither a buffoon nor a great intellect, but a man who was always evolving on the stage of a nation in its adolescence, a pioneer in his dreams of an breakfast nation with the gays but toward the west. perhaps more than any one of his time davey crockett was arguably our first celebrity hero, inspiring people with his own time as well as a 20th-century generation. a man, david crockett, may have perished on march 61836 in the final assault on the alamo, but the missile day -- the medical the rocket, now an integral part

of the american psyche perhaps more so than any other french is not, lives powerfully on. in this way this story becomes far more than 01 note walt disney legend. well his life continues to shed light on the meeting of america's national character. a spoonful from a chapter entitled to hilton bar. drave the crack to believe in the wind and the stars. the son of timothy could read the sun, this that goes to my and the wild cloud full of the other. he was comfortable amid the thickets and the quagmire is an amount falls. he had to the old hickory maple and sweet gum force that had never felt an ax blade. he was familiar with all the

smells, the odor of decaying animal flesh, the aroma of the air after rain, and the pungent smell of the forest. he knew the river is lined with sycamore, poplars, and willow the priest amounts through steep cited gorgeous with strange sounding names, many with indian influences. [inaudible] he sought the dimensions of lakes and streams studded with aids and cyprus. he learned that dog days of arrive not to the heat of august, but in early july when the dog star rises and sets with the sun. he carried his compass and maps and is said. he traversed the land when it was lush and the one times and when it was covered with the frost,