Peals of laughter rippled through the ether in April when hundreds of thousands of people clicked on YouTube.com (GOOG ) to watch comedian Will Ferrell's short video, The Landlord. It's pretty hilarious, after all, to see a tiny 2-year-old girl in a party dress playing the part of an irate landlord, squeaking, "I am tired of this crap...I want my money!" at Ferrell, her distraught, bushy-haired tenant.

What chuckling viewers couldn't see was the sprawling framework that companies have cobbled together to zap millions of clips like this one around the Internet every day. After a student, say, at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., clicked on The Landlord, one of hundreds of thousands of computer servers in Google's (GOOG ) numerous California data centers pushed the video through Web networking gear from Cisco Systems (CSCO ) and Juniper Networks (JNPR ). Last year, Google, YouTube's parent company, spent $1.9 billion, or 18% of its sales, on technology systems and other capital expenditures to serve videos speedily and process search-engine queries.

From Google's facility, the video shot across the U.S. on Level 3 Communications Inc.'s fiber-optic network, which encompasses 47,000 miles of cable. Reaching New Jersey, the clip was then handed off to a new fiber loop run by Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ ) Milliseconds later, Verizon served up the video to an apartment in New Brunswick through a broadband connection wired directly into the building.

In those taken-for-granted wires, cables, and computers lies a remarkable tale of resurrection. Seven years ago the communications business, made up of companies providing everything from phones to computer networks to routers and switches, was laid low by the worst collapse to hit a U.S. industry since the Great Depression. With breathtaking speed and little advance warning, high-flying companies like Global Crossing Ltd. (GLBC ) and WorldCom Inc., which had loaded up on debt to build out fiber-optic networks and buy up companies in anticipation of a never-ending e-commerce boom, collapsed into bankruptcy. Giants such as AT&T were ripped apart as they scrambled to recover from free-falling sales and profits. Hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs. Prices of some inflated stocks--boasting price-to-earnings ratios that topped 400 in the most extreme cases--tumbled 95% or more.

Investors saw some $2 trillion of market value vanish in a little more than two years--twice the damage caused by the parallel bursting of the Internet bubble. Amid the wreckage, some predicted it could take a decade or more before the industry would climb back and fill all those empty pipes that starry-eyed executives had buried beneath the earth and oceans.

Over the past year, however, the telecom industry has roared back to life. Credit a steady rise in appetite for broadband Internet connections, which enable easy consumption of watch-my-cat video clips, iPod music files, and such Web-inspired services as free Internet phoning. Indeed, this year broadband adoption among U.S. adults is expected to cross the important threshold of 50%. Capital spending is on the rise as companies invest to build high-speed networks. Private equity players are placing enormous bets on the industry, such as the $8.2 billion that Silver Lake Partners and the Texas Pacific Group agreed to pay for networking gearmaker Avaya on June 5. And the glut in broadband communications capacity is all but gone.

About half of the Internet's transmission capacity was going unused in 2002. Today that pipeline has almost doubled in size, and yet the unused portion is down to about 30%. As a result, the price that companies pay for bandwidth in some parts of the U.S. is on the rise after six years of declines. "All of us are planning expansions of our backbones in order to support growth in Internet applications and video," says Dan Yost, executive vice-president for product at Denver-based communications provider Qwest Communications International Inc. (Q )

Perhaps the best indicator of the telecom revival is this startling data point: Profits for the industry this year are expected to reach an all-time high of $72 billion, topping for the first time the high-water mark of $65 billion in 1998.

You don't have to tell investors that telecom is back. It has been one of the hottest sectors in the stock market over the past 18 months. In 2006 big phone company and other stocks represented in the Telecom HOLDRS (TTH ) exchange-traded fund rose 34%, after a nearly 10% decline in 2005. And the fund is up 14.8% so far in 2007, compared with a 7.7% gain for the Dow Jones industrial average.

But telecom's revival has implications way beyond Wall Street. A dollar spent on telecom infrastructure produces an outsize impact on the U.S. economy as a whole. Indeed, a growing body of research has found that telecom investment plays a vital role in stimulating economic growth and productivity--more so than money spent on roads, electricity, or even education. Communication assets generate massive benefits by slashing the cost of doing business across the economy. A high-speed data network suddenly makes it easier and cheaper for all kinds of workers to place orders, service customers, and drum up new business.

A 2001 paper in the American Economic Review, written by Lars-Hendrik Röller of Berlin's Social Science Research Center and Leonard Waverman of the London Business School, concluded that the spread of land-based telecommunications networks in 21 developed nations accounted for one-third of the increase in economic output between 1970 and 1990. Other studies suggest fiber-optic and wireless networks provide their own special jolt to the economies of rich and poor nations alike. "Out of the ashes of the tech crisis we got a world-class, spanking-new communications network," says Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody Corp.'s (MCO ) Economy.com Inc. "That has been key to outsized productivity gains ever since."

The $900 billion industry looks far different than it did in 2000. The balance of power has shifted toward Web upstarts such as YouTube and MySpace that barely registered seven years ago. The Bell phone companies, meanwhile, have consolidated and are furiously developing services they hope will let them capitalize on the billions they're investing to build speedy new networks.

It's not clear, though, how much of the value flowing from those networks will be captured by the Bell companies themselves. The big phone companies don't have a history of developing game-changing technologies in a competitive arena. "They've got a high hill to climb," says William E. Kennard, a former Federal Communications Commission chairman who is now managing director of Carlyle Group, a large private equity firm that has purchased some telecom assets. Meanwhile, Web companies such as Google are making a push to introduce more competition into the wireless industry and loosen the Bells' control over the Internet's distribution.

The long-awaited arrival this month of Apple Inc.'s (AAPL ) iPhone, which surfs the Web, takes pictures, plays music--and oh, yeah makes phone calls--may herald a new round of disruption for the big telcos. By allowing software developers to write applications for a better mobile Web device, Apple is attempting to shatter the so-called walled-garden model of wireless companies in which they control the wireless Internet gateway and the content that is featured on the handset screen. If the iPhone's Web browser performs as hyped, customers could start demanding a full range of Internet service on their phones and new freedom in their service plans. That, in turn, could create ever more demand for servers and routers, video services, and upgraded wireless networks.

Within the broad industry comeback are some remarkable turnarounds. Few companies got whipsawed harder by the bust than Level 3 Communications. Founder and Chief Executive James Q. Crowe started Level 3 in 1998 with a dream of building the world's largest, most advanced fiber-optic network--and with $3 billion raised from investors that included Walter Scott Jr., an Omaha construction magnate and friend of Warren Buffett. Before long, the company was digging up earth in 20 time zones with 250 crews installing fiber at a blistering pace of 19 miles a day. In March, 2000, Level 3's stock peaked at $130 a share. But with money flowing like water, by the end of the year at least 50 other companies jumped in to offer Internet backbone services. When it became apparent that Crowe's network was attracting more competitors than customers, the stock tumbled off a cliff, nearly killing the company. By October, 2001, it had bottomed out at $1.98 a share, sticking investors with tens of billions in losses.

Today, Level 3 is alive and growing again. Over the past three years a strong bond market enabled the company to refinance its massive debt at lower rates and pull off 10 acquisitions worth more than $4 billion. Level 3 says more than half of its network traffic today is from Web video, vs. no such traffic in 2000. High debt levels are keeping its business in the red; analysts don't expect Level 3 to generate positive cash flow until the end of this year. But over the past nine months, Level 3's stock has jumped 60%, to about 5 1/2, as it reaps a kind of survivor's premium. "For a long time they were on death watch, but now they are the last guy standing in the U.S. wholesale [bandwidth] business," says Stephan Beckert, an analyst with Washington-based TeleGeography Research.

Now even some initial public offerings are drawing interest on Wall Street. Shares in Dallas-based wireless service provider MetroPCS Communications Inc. (PCS ) have jumped nearly 50% since the company went public on Apr. 22 at $23 a share. The stock price of communications gearmaker Riverbed Technology Inc. (RVBD ) has more than quadrupled, to 40, since a September, 2006, IPO. "There's a huge amount of startup innovation" in the communications industry, says Morgan Jones, a partner with Battery Ventures, a venture-capital firm in Waltham, Mass., that invested in MetroPCS.

Of course, that's how it felt back in 2000--in spades. Then, it seemed as if demand for optical routers, "pump lasers," and other whiz-bang broadband technologies would grow forever. But when dot-coms started flopping in the spring of 2000, the absurdity of projections calling for Internet traffic to double every three months was revealed. The capital spigot, which had been gushing with cash for upstart phone companies and established carriers alike, shut off. With too many bandwidth providers chasing falling demand, wholesale Internet connection prices began falling by 50% a year.

The first big dominos fell in 2001, when broadband providers Winstar Communications and 360Networks filed for bankruptcy. Over the next three years 655 telecom companies, with a combined $749 billion in assets, filed for bankruptcy, according to BankruptcyData.com. On July 21, 2001, after an accounting scandal revealed billions of dollars of overstated profits, WorldCom Inc., the giant that embodied the boom era's promise, filed the largest bankruptcy claim ever.

The scope of the wipeout was breathtaking, conjuring comparisons with the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s. But this time it was private investors who ate the losses, not the government. And the speed of creative destruction had one advantage: By early 2004, recovery was already under way. In a key deal in February of that year, Cingular Wireless agreed to buy AT&T Wireless Services for about $41 billion. Soon the consolidation shifted into overdrive. In December, Sprint announced a deal to buy Nextel Communications for $35 billion; a month later, SBC Communications said it would buy AT&T for $16 billion; a month after that, Verizon struck a deal to acquire MCI, the former WorldCom, for $8.4 billion.

But while the phone and cable companies tightened their grips on the transmission pipes, an army of upstarts went to work filling them. It's no accident that the explosion of online video and the rebirth of telecom happened around the same time. A typical video consumes 1,000 times as much bandwidth as a sound file. (Likewise, high-definition video, which consumes 7 to 10 times as much bandwidth as normal video, could trigger the next surge in network growth.)

Online video barely existed in 2000. Today, fully one-third of all Internet traffic comes from Web videos, The Landlord included. Thanks to bandwidth-hungry services such as YouTube, global Internet traffic from 2003 to 2006 grew at a compounded annual rate of 75% a year, according to TeleGeography. "When you compound those numbers, I don't care how much inventory you have, it's going to disappear off the shelf," says Level 3 CEO Crowe.

To understand the velocity at which video is taking over the Web, consider the experience of VideoEgg Inc. While not nearly as well known as YouTube, VideoEgg in less than two years has grown to become the largest video service for social-networking Web sites. Instead of building their own Web video services, big online communities such as Bebo and hi5 use VideoEgg technology to let members broadcast videos on their sites.

Today, VideoEgg serves up about 15 million videos a day across 70 Web sites. To deliver them, the company works with giants such as AT&T and Verizon as well as Web content-delivery service Akamai Technologies. (AKAM ) By yearend, VideoEgg CEO and co-founder Matt Sanchez believes the company could more than triple its current traffic.

Mainstream organizations also have knit broadband networks into the fabric of their daily operations. Take something as simple as mail delivery. Since 2005 the U.S. Postal Service has been using wireless scanners so mail handlers can keep tabs on the location of every one of the 200 billion pieces of mail it delivers in a year. And it is now testing a wireless system that will keep track of thousands of mail trailers parked in its 22 bulk mail centers. Since 2001 the Postal Service has boosted its network capacity tenfold to support these systems. As a result, the service has become a major buyer of telecom infrastructure, spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on communications services provided by Verizon and AT&T.

Indeed, while companies remain tightfisted in their spending on computers and other information technology, many of them believe new networks provide a big bang for their bucks. Global spending on communications equipment for corporations is forecast to grow 20% over the next three years, according to Infonetics Research of Campbell, Calif. Consider the experience of clothing maker Liz Claiborne Inc. (LIZ ): In late 2005 employees were becoming increasingly frustrated when it was taking up to half an hour just to open up a 40-megabyte spreadsheet. After the company installed new gear from Riverbed Technology that compresses the files and stores the most popular data closer to the users, documents popped open in a few minutes. "People were like, Wow, I can't believe how fast this is,'" says Rakesh Patel, Liz Claiborne's technical architect.

If the old telecom world was dominated by bloated regional monopolies, the new world is a competitive mosh pit stocked with sinewy players. That's reflected in how much more productive the industry has become. While telecom revenues are now 19% higher than they were in 2000, that money supports just 1.1 million workers, down nearly 30% from boom-era levels. "It has gotten unrelentingly competitive in every area: broadband, land line, and wireless," says AT&T's new CEO, Randall Stephenson.

For the big carriers such as at&t, Verizon, and Qwest, the main challenge is to slow defections of traditional land-line customers while producing faster revenue growth in new markets such as wireless, Internet service, pay TV, and advertising. The carriers must overcome their reputation for being "dumb pipes" and prove they can fill their networks with innovative bundles of products and services that strike a chord with customers--all while battling cable operators, which are poaching millions of phone customers, and fending off or making peace with aggressive new entrants such as Google and Apple. (AAPL )

There is reason to believe the phone companies are reinventing themselves. Verizon, for example, will soon offer services that allow consumers to personalize and share photos, videos, and other media among their cell phones, PCs, and TVs. Five years ago, Verizon employed about 100 software developers who were mostly focused on installing products developed outside the company. Today, Chief Technology Officer Shaygan Kheradpir oversees more than 1,000 developers. In July the company will launch an interactive media guide for Verizon's FiOSTV service; by clicking on it, couch potatoes can access all of the photos, music, and videos they have stored on a PC. Further down the road, Verizon says it will steal a page from YouTube and allow TV customers to create their own personalized video channels. "We don't have to own every service," says Verizon CEO Ivan G. Seidenberg. "We just have to package a lot of them and help the customer find the things they like."

It doesn't help that American phone companies can no longer rely on the wireless business for growth as much as they have in the past. Mobile telephony is a maturing market. For the first time, this year the growth rate for new wireless subscribers in the U.S. is expected to decline. To continue generating double-digit revenue growth, wireless carriers must steal customers from one another or persuade more consumers to buy next-generation phones and purchase so-called 3G services such as games, music, and videos. Every major wireless service provider is upgrading its networks to provide faster speeds for uploading and downloading wireless content. But only 15% of the wireless handsets in the U.S. are capable of handling 3G services.

That raises a troubling question: Could another unpleasant surprise await investors who have bought into this shiny image of telecom transformation? Maybe. Some of the projections for new mobile-phone businesses, especially video downloads, seem over-the-top in a late-'90s kind of way. But there's nowhere near the sense of limitless expectations that drove telecom investors off the cliff last time. Despite strong performances of late, stocks such as AT&T, Verizon, and Cisco Systems are trading today at 15 to 20 times 2007 earnings. Cisco's price-earnings ratio in 2000 hit 145.

Perhaps Cisco, the No. 1 seller of network gear, is emblematic. In what seemed at the time like a milestone in the Net's ascendency, Cisco briefly passed Microsoft Corp. in March, 2000, to become the most valuable company on the planet. Soon after, Cisco had to write down $2 billion of unsellable routers and other equipment. By July, 2002, its stock price had tumbled from 77 to 12. Cisco cut costs, laid off workers for the first time, and weathered the storm. Today, it is flowering again, selling equipment to cable and phone companies that are expanding their services, and branching out into new business and consumer markets. In the most recent quarter, the company reported profits of $1.9 billion, up 34%, on strong sales of $8.9 billion. On June 12, the stock was trading around 26.

CEO John Chambers tells a post-bust story that sums up how quickly things have turned around. Back in 2004, he recalls, critics laughed when Cisco rolled out an audacious new router, the CRS-1, capable of transmitting the entire contents of the Library of Congress in a few seconds. Analysts predicted only a handful would sell. This year, thanks to the video bandwidth hogs, sales of the CRS-1 are expected to hit $1 billion, more than double the figure for 2006. Says Chambers, who has never lacked for confidence throughout the boom, bust, and boom again: "The market is going exactly where we thought."

But the public knows the American health-care system is breaking up, no matter how much its backers cheer. For starters, there's the 46 million uninsured (projected to rise to 56 million in five years). There's the shock of the underinsured when they learn that their policies exclude a costly procedure they need—forcing them to run up an unpayable bill, beg for charity care or go without. And think of the millions who plan their lives around health insurance—where to work, whether to start a business, when to retire, even whom to marry (there are "benefits" marriages, just as there are "green card" marriages). It shocks the conscience that those who profit from this mess tell us to suck it up.

I do agree that we can't afford to cover everyone under the crazy health-care system we have now. We can't even afford all the people we're covering already, which is why we keep booting them out. But we have an excellent template for universal care right under our noses: good old American Medicare. When you think of reform, think "Medicare for all."

Medicare is what's known as a single-payer system. In the U.S. version, the government pays for health care delivered in the private sector. There's one set of comprehensive benefits, with premiums, co-pays and streamlined paperwork. You can buy private coverage for the extra costs.

Health insurers hate this model, which would end their gravy train. So they're trying to tar single-payer as a kind of medical Voldemort, ready to destroy. Here are some of their canards, and my replies:

Universal coverage costs too much. No—what costs too much is the system we have now. In 2005, the United States spent 15.3 percent of gross domestic product on health care for only some of us. France spent 10.7 percent and covered everyone. The French comparison is good because its system works very much like Medicare-for-all. The other European countries, all with universal coverage, spent less than France.

Why are U.S. costs off the charts? Partly because we don't bargain with providers for a universal price. Partly because of the money that health insurers spend on marketing and screening people in or out. Medicare's overhead is just 1.5 percent, compared with 13 to 16 percent in the private sector. John Sheils of the Lewin Group, a health-care consultant, says that the health insurers' overhead came to $120 billion last year, of which $40 billion was profit. By comparison, it would cost $54 billion to cover all the uninsured.

Eeeek, your taxes would go up! Maybe not, if Sheils is right. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office have testified that the United States could insure everyone for the money we're spending now. But even if taxes did rise, you might still come out ahead. That's because your Medicare plan would probably cost less than the medical bills and premiums you're paying now.

We get world-class care; don't tamper with it. On average, we don't. International surveys put France in first place. On almost all measures of health care and mortality, we lag behind Canada and Europe. Many individuals do indeed get superior care, but so do people in single-payer countries, and at lower cost.

They have long waiting times. No advanced country has waiting periods for emergency surgery or procedures that are urgently needed. The United States has shorter waits than Canada and England for elective surgery. Still, queues are developing here, at the doctor's door. In a study of five developed countries, the Commonwealth Fund looked at how many sick adults had to wait six days or more for an appointment. By this measure, only Canada's record was worse than ours. But waits depend on how well a system is funded, not with the fact that it's single-payer. Many countries that cover everyone, including France, Belgium, Germany and Japan, report no issue with waits at all.

There's no problem; people get care even if they're uninsured. They don't. They get emergency treatment but little else. As a group, the uninsured are sicker, suffer more from chronic disease and rarely get rehabilitation after an injury or surgery. They also die sooner—knowing that, with insurance, they might have lived.

Right now, Congress is trying to bring 3.3 million uninsured children into the State Children's Health Insurance Program. President George W. Bush says he'll veto the expansion as "the wrong path for our nation." He objects to "government-run health care" (like Medicare?) and says that SCHIP "deprives Americans of ... choice" (like the choice to go uninsured?). Buzzwords like "government run" are supposed to summon up monsters like "socialized medicine" that apparently still lurk under our beds. If these terror tactics work, prepare for another 46 million uninsured.

Reporter Associate: Temma Ehrenfeld
 
 

Following is the statement by President Larry Cohen of the Communications Workers of America at the news conference announcing the “Better Health Care Together” Campaign. The diverse group of business, labor and non-profit leaders outlined four principles to reform the U.S. health care system by 2012. 

All of us share a commitment to universal health care for all Americans within five years. 

By any measure ? whether we’re considering the impact on our global competitiveness, the devastating drain on our economy, or the basic immorality of allowing 47 million people to remain without health care coverage ? our current system is insufficient. 

We often hear that the United States has the best quality medical care in the world.  And, for the dollars we spend that should be true.  But it’s not. 

The World Health Organization ranks the United States at 37th among the nations of the world in delivering quality care.  And, that's despite our spending double the amount per capita that Japan, Canada, and European nations spend on health care.  When it comes to infant mortality, we're 44th in the world, far behind all other advanced economies. 

Our current system is the most expensive in the world and amounts to 16 percent of our gross national product. 

Most labor disputes today ? such as the recent 3-month Goodyear strike ? are caused by workers trying to protect their families' health security.  Such conflict affects our economy as well as the lives of those directly involved. 

Barbara, a CWA Customer Service Representative in Stockton, California, wrote recently that, “I’m worried that someday there will be no health care insurance for us, and only the wealthy will be able to go to the doctor.  We need a plan for everyone.”
She’s right.
Our current system puts a huge strain on employers like AT&T that provide quality benefits for employees – both current and retired – and their families.  It forces many U.S. businesses to compete not on the quality of their products, services and performance, but instead on the cost of health care benefits.  Many U.S. companies must compete globally against competitors where there is some form of national health care that reduces benefit costs and gives those competitors an advantage.

Let’s just imagine universal health care coverage for every person in America ? a system that expands health care coverage outside the traditional employment relationship ? a system that assures working families that they won’t lose their health coverage if they change or lose their jobs ? a system that ensures that retirees have health security.

What could our economy achieve without the financial drag of our damaged health care system?  How far could we progress in today’s global economy?  How many jobs might we create or keep in the United States? 

Ken, a CWA member in Vancouver, Washington, like many working people, sees the link between universal, quality heath care coverage and the United States’ ability to maintain our place in the world’s economy, and keep quality jobs in the U.S.  He writes that we can’t “simply lower the cost of labor by supporting off-shoring and importing cheap labor.  We need to move toward standardizing health care coverage.”

Today, we are beginning to build support among elected officials and the public to achieve universal health care by 2012.  It’s long past time to move health care ? a public good ? from the corporate balance sheet to the public balance sheet. 

CWA has worked with many of our employers on health care issues for decades and, with AT&T, pioneered ways to ensure quality care, manage costs and provide health care security to hundreds of thousands of employees and their families.  But those efforts alone are not sufficient. 

We don’t all agree on the details.  But we have found common ground.  The coalition has set 2012 as the date for achieving our goal of guaranteed universal health care, and our common commitment can make a difference. 
For more information, contact Jeff Miller or Candice Johnson, CWA Communications, 202-434-1168, jmiller@cwa-union.org and cjohnson@cwa-union.org

TO:  All CWA District 7 Local Officers

FROM: Reed Roberts, Administrative Assistant to the Vice President

SUBJECT: H.R. 4, the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA)

Attached is the analysis of this prepared by Bob Patrician, Research Economist at CWA Headquarters giving a brief explanation of the pension legislation adopted in 2006.

We understand that the Locals are getting a number of inquiries from their members that the PPA will require some changes to our Pension Plan. These concerns primarily are with those units that allow ‘lump sum’ distributions in that the PPA will force a reduction in the amounts paid.

Lump sums are calculated on the basis of an amount provided under the Plan. Under the Qwest Plan for example, the lump sum distribution is equal to ten years of annuity payments (the monthly pension amount x 12 x 10). The calculation then takes into account the 30-year Treasury rate. Under this preexisting formula, the higher the interest rate, the lower the lump sum distribution. The rationale for this is that the higher the interest rate, the higher the return on investments, so the lower the lump. When interest rates are low, the return on investments is lower, the lump is bigger.

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 was aimed at those employers whose Pension Plans were under-funded and has little to no effect on our existing pension plans in telecommunications. It does mean a lot for our members in the airline industry who were impacted by the defaulting and bankruptcy of some of those major employers. As Bob notes in his analysis:

“For a plan which is in financial trouble such an immediate payout could have negative consequences for the ongoing health of the plan.  The legislation would prevent plans which are severely under-funded from paying out lump sum distributions. 
The proposal would also make some changes to the part of the law which governs the calculation of lump sums.  Under current law, “a plan’s lump sum payment to a participant or beneficiary must be no less than the present value of the annuity to which the participant or beneficiary would have been entitled.  For this calculation, the plan must use specified interest and mortality assumptions.” 

Under the new legislation, the calculation of this minimum lump sum amount 
must use a “three-segment yield curve” of corporate bond rates to determine the interest rate to be used.  As a rule of thumb, corporate bond rates have generally run about one percentage point higher than the 30-year Treasury bond rate.”

A second question has to do with any change to current Plan calculations. Again using the Qwest Plan as an example, the 30-year Treasury rate is the basis for these calculations. Mr. Patrician’s memo addresses this as well:

“…the most critical fact about the calculation of lump sum distributions is that the new law sets the methodology for calculating the minimum amount.  It is perfectly acceptable for a pension plan to pay a larger amount, as long as that amount does not exceed the limitation established in Section 303 of the proposal.”

The law does not require that the contractual formulas negotiated with employers such as Qwest be changed as a result of the new legislation nor have any of our employers approached us about doing so, therefore our Plans continue as negotiated.

Background Information on this Pension Legislation.

FROM: Bob Patrician  Research Economist    TO: CWA Executive Board

Read his Report to CWA file Sol's goodbye kiss