GRASSLEY ANNOUNCES HEARING ON CASH BALANCE PLANS


Hearing: "The Cash Balance Conundrum: How to Promote Pensions Without Harming Participants"
Date/time: Monday, June 5, 2000, at 1 p.m.
Location: 628 Dirksen Senate Office Building

Description: More and more employers are switching from traditional pension plans to cash balance plans. A traditional pension plan bases benefits on the number of years a person has worked for a company and salary in the last few years of employment. A cash balance plan accrues benefits earlier in a worker's tenure. Some conversions to cash balance plans have been high-profile and controversial. Opponents charge that employers are using cash balance designs to lower pension costs at the expense of older workers. Proponents of cash balance plans say that conversions are undertaken to better meet the needs of a mobile and changing workforce.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Special Committee on Aging, will convene a hearing to examine the problems created by cash balance plan conversions and solutions to those problems.

Witness List

Panel I:

Mr. James A. Bruggeman, employee of the Central and South West Corp., who will describe his negative experience with the utility company's conversion to a cash balance plan, Tulsa, Okla.

Mr. Joseph Perkins, immediate past president, the AARP, Washington, D.C.

Ms. Karen W. Ferguson, director, The Pension Rights Center, Washington, D.C.

Panel II:

Ms. Laurel Sweatt, manager of benefits, Central and South West Corp., representing the Association of Private Pension and Welfare Plans, Dallas, Texas

Dr. Sylvester J. Schieber, director of the Research and Information Center, Watson Wyatt Worldwide, Bethesda, Md.

Mr. John F. Woyke, actuary and benefits consultant, principal, Towers Perrin,Valhalla, N.Y.