BellTel Retirees to meet April 21 in Dover

The Association of BellTel Retirees has selected Dover Downs Resort and Casino as the location for the 19th annual member meeting of the national telephone retirees’ organization.  The gathering will take place at 10 a.m., Tuesday, April 21, at 1131 N Dupont Hwy., Dover.

The 130,000-member nonprofit advocacy group works for the protection of Verizon retirees’ pensions and benefits.  Verizon is the largest telecommunications firm in the world, and its more than a quarter million retirees hail from the old Bell System including NYNEX, New York Telephone, New Jersey Bell and Bell Atlantic, Bell of Pennsylvania, Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone, Diamond State Telephone, New England Telephone, MCI and GTE, as well as the Verizon spin-off DexMedia.

Each year hundreds of retirees and their spouses attend the event which features networking, a keynote speaker and discussions about important retiree pension and benefit protection issues and legislation.

BellTel Retirees President & Executive Director John Brennan said, “Retirees in our nation have been literally beaten up by corporations via pension stripping and severe cuts or elimination of their earned retirement healthcare benefits and more.  Our annual meetings, held across different cities and states,  give thousands of retirees a chance to not only reconnect with some old workplace colleagues but participate in strategic discussions about the protections of the pensions and benefits they labored decades to earn.”

The association has achieved numerous successes and significant expansion since its founding in 1996:

· It achieved three shareowner proxy victories and caused eight other changes to  Verizon’s corporate bylaws

· Association lawyers successfully stopped a Verizon spin-off, SuperMedia, from suing individual retirees for protesting that company’s cancellation of their healthcare benefits

· The group testified in Washington, D.C., before the U.S. Department of Labor on Verizon selling off 41,000 retiree pensions in 2013 converting those to annuities

· It helped with the creation of new legislation to amend ERISA law and make it more difficult for companies to reduce or eliminate the pensions and healthcare benefits of their former employees.

The association last held its 2007 annual member meeting in Dover with several hundred in attendance.  The retiree gathering typically outdraws the attendance at Verizon Communication’s own annual shareholders meeting.

For more information about the Association of BellTel Retirees or this event, email association@belltelretirees.org.