Economics: Workers Pensions: Another corporate criminal brawt to justice, Enron ripoff of workers pensions

The US Labor Department won another partial victory in its struggle to protect workers pensions from unscrupulous mega-corporations. In this case the perpetrator is the infamous Enrong Corporation which doled out huge bonuses to numerous top Execs anticipating the corporation would belly-up in due course. That means a certain callousness of enormous magnitude for retired and retiring employees of countless years of service was calculated, and disdained.


According to the Associated Press;

The Labor Department, which sued Enron in 2003 on behalf of the company's employees, said about $356 million will be set aside out of proceeds from the sale of Enron's assets to cover some of the lost retirement and pension plan benefits.

"This agreement makes possible a significant recovery for Enron retirees and their families," Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said.

The settlement resolves the lawsuit, which alleged Enron mismanaged its retirement and pension plans by relying on its stocks to support them and did nothing to protect workers from losses, according to a Labor Department statement.

But the unsigned AP report is clearly remiss in its widely disseminated thumbnail, another case of fawlty journalism by the Mainstream Media, in rushing by a tremendously salient fact in the case which is brawt out by reporter Peter Szekely, writing for Reuters:

"But the department stressed that since pending bankruptcy court claims against the Houston-based company exceed its assets, payouts to retirement plan participants will be in the "tens of millions of dollars," rather than the full value of the $356.25 million settlement.

"This agreement makes possible a significant recovery for Enron retirees and their families," Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said in a statement.

Notice how the same statement by Labor Secretary Chao functions differently in the two opposed accounts. And notice how for once Reuters got it right. - Owlb

Telltale Fact