Bill number "H.R. 4844" assigned to
"Railroad Retirement Survivors’ Act of 2000"

WASHINGTON -- The "Railroad Retirement and Survivors’ Act of 2000" has been introduced today (July 13, 2000) in the U.S. House of Representatives and assigned the bill number H.R. 4844.

"It is imperative for all active and retired UTU members to immediately contact their lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives to ask them to support and co-sponsor this legislation," said UTU International President Charles L. Little. "UTU members should also contact both of their senators and ask them to support similar legislation in the U.S. Senate."

UTU National Legislative Director James M. Brunkenhoefer is urging UTU members to "please work with a great sense of urgency. We must do as much as possible, as quickly as possible, because those who oppose this legislation will be working hard to kill it," Brunkenhoefer said. "Time is short."

A major coalition of 13 rail unions and rail retiree organizations representing more than 3 million members is continuing to press for introduction of a companion measure in the Senate.

Members can determine who their lawmakers are, and at the same time send an e-mail message to them, via the World Wide Web by accessing  http://congress.nw.dc.us/c-span/elecmail.html.

Updated samples of letters bearing the newly assigned bill number have been posted on the UTU’s website for use by all active and retired railroaders who hope to secure the pension system improvements detailed in H.R. 4844. (Letter #1 - House) and  (Letter #2 - Senate)

Members will also find on the UTU’s website a copy of the pending legislation in the form of an Adobe Acrobat PDF file (RAIL_005.pdf). Computer users can read and print the legislation if they have installed the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information about the free Adobe Acrobat Reader is available on the UTU’s website at  http://www.utu.org/PDF/PDFDOCS1.HTM, and the Adobe software can be downloaded from       http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html#reader.

Click here for updated list of Co-sponsors for H.R. 4844.

"All members should fight for passage of this legislation," said President Little. "With its adoption, we can finally fix the widow and widower benefit to bring a full pension payment to grieving spouses, we can lower pension entitlement to age 60 with 30 years of service from age 62, we can provide health coverage beginning at age 60, we can lower the vesting requirement from 10 years to five years for younger workers, and we can do it all with the assurance that any increased costs will be borne by the carriers."

Passage of the legislation would:

• Increase benefits for surviving spouses of retired workers by stopping the bereaved from losing 50% of their Tier II annuity;
• Restore unreduced retirement benefits at age 60 with 30 years service;
• Expand the retiree health insurance plan to age 60 with increases in the lifetime benefit maximum indexed to the medical inflation rate;
• Allow for the Tier II system to invest in equities and thereby achieve a higher rate of return on investments. This would make both benefit increases for employees and retirees and tax decreases for the carriers possible;
• Guarantee that the railroads will ensure future solvency of the fund by absorbing any necessary future tax increases;
• Reduce vesting from ten to five years, and
• Repeal the retirement benefit cap for current and future retirees alike.

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