It's just the only in-depth description of the charges I've
been able to find, and this is pretty significant news IMO.
The notes from the House subcommittee of the financial services committee from May presents a less bias bend: http://www.nlpc.org/olap/congress/020501.html
It is an important issue, underscoring the need for workers at all levels of a company to have the same rights over their retirement and investment plans as execs and the board.
The related and less discussed issue wrt to ULLICO / CWA / Global Crossing is this: Over 1100 unionized Frontier workers had their Frontier shares converted to Global Crossing shares when Global Crossing acquired Frontier in 9/99. One year later, because Global Crossing was looking for cash, it sold this unit to Citizens Communications. The catch - Global Crossing decided to maintain possession of a $600mln defined benefit (i.e. supposedly company guaranteed) retirement plan, even though the workers who had contributed to the plan went to Citizens. It is almost unprecedented, though not illegal, for workers and their defined plans to be separated. One reason ULLICO invested in GC originally, way before the IPO, was that Gary Winnick 'promised' he would open GC to more unionized positions. Meanwhile, the CWA and Citizens are still involved in litigation with Global Crossing to get the assets from the plan back.
Nomi Prins
