Plight of Telco retirees

THE EDITOR: In 1991 the Telephone Company (Telco) was merged with the international service provider Textel. The new company was rightly named Telecom Services of TT as it expanded it service from voice to high-speed data, wireless and full-motion video. The HR, finance, customer service and engineering departments all had to merge to improve efficiency.

The representative union, CWU, in an attempt to block the merger, blocked the merging of the two pension plans. The merger that produced TSTT resulted in increased salaries for former Telco workers and capital expenditure for infrastructural development.

In 2021, the company pursued a merger of the two pension plans but the CWU strongly resisted without providing any justification. The company incentivised the proposal by offering a payout of $300 million, a third of the surplus which happens to be the workers’ contribution. There was wiggle room for a larger payout but the union was not interested.

After talks broke down, the retirees took the matter to court through private counsel late last year and are awaiting a judgement, which may come as early as next month.

Another related matter was the excess "over-deduction" of 1.5 per cent pension dues for the period 1995 to 2006, which both company and union agreed would have been refunded. That was four years ago.

We have a pension plan with $2 billion in assets, $1 billion in surplus and 1,400 beneficiaries, with retired managers, many of whom were never part of Telco, receiving as much as $65K while bona fide Telco retirees receive as little as $1,000 per month, not enough to pay property tax or the cost of medication.

Merging of the two plans will benefit the financially weaker TSTT pension plan, yet the union is unmoved and the company appears to have moved on.

KEITH GONZALES

retiree, Telco