Many of you may know that a joint house and senate congressional committee has been haggling over provisions of a pension reform bill. Word is now that the tentative agreement announced July 27th has fallen apart over the push to repeal the estate tax. This may change, of course, by the time you read this but there has been heavy lobbying on all sides, and efforts by pension advocates to uphold crucial worker protections in the bill have proved to be affective with some members of the pension committee. These protections may still hang in the balance. For further information go to http://www.pensionrights.org/news/press/ and http://johnboehner.house.gov/news.asp?FormMode=Detail&ID=1208. The UMPRP has been very busy this past year. We have assisted 14 clients in obtaining recoveries from their pension plans. Total recoveries are close to $2,200,000 for our five-sate region, with close to $2,000,000 of that amount coming from our Minnesota office. Recoveries instances range from lost pension recoveries, divorced and surviving spouse benefits, benefit miscalculations, and one benefit from Daimler Chrysler that our client had been pursuing for almost ten years, both on their own and with a private attorney. Another case involved a firefighter whom we believe was illegally placed in the St. Paul Firefighter's Relief Association pension fund instead of the Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA) pension fund 26 years ago, a move which eventually cost him all of his contributions to the fund and any pension benefit. Just this spring the Minnesota State Legislative Committee on Pensions and Retirement agreed to right this wrong an award our client his full PERA benefit. The UMPRP sees many cases where disabled retirees would have been eligible for a disability pension from their pension plan, had they known about it and applied for it at the required time. Please, if you must leave your employment because of a disability, or if you are a workers' comp or SSDI attorney, check the Summary Plan Description (SPD) of the pension plan in question prior to terminating employment, or as soon as possible thereafter, to see if you or your client might qualify for this benefit. Just a quick reminder of your pension rights: A private pension plan participant always has the right to a copy of the plan's SPD within 30 days of a written request. This applies to the most recently applicable benefit statement as well (one per year). If this request is not complied with it is important to document this as to date, time, etc, and keep copies of any requests made. If you are concerned about the status of your or your client's Northwest Airlines pension and possible plan termination and PBCG involvement, go to www.pbgc.gov and click on "What PBGC Guarantees." Also check out your international union group's website. If you still have questions feel free to call the UMPRP at 651-783-5021 or 800-783-5021. Other helpful pension related union web pages (even if you aren't in a union) are http://www.goiam.org/content.cfm?cID=8293 and www.knowyourpension.org