Tape Release 5/6/2021
Membership and Retirement Updates:
As most of you may know by now, Frontier announced that it exited bankruptcy on Friday, April 30th. One of the impacts has been to Rochester Telephone/Frontier retirees who have died since last April and their surviving spouses were eligible for a death benefit equivalent to 1-year final salary, payable out of the pension fund. This benefit only applied to employees who retired before December 31st, 1996. Due to the bankruptcy, surviving spouses were only eligible to receive this benefit in a monthly annuity instead of lump sum payment. Based on the Company exiting bankruptcy and the current funding level of the pension plan, those who were receiving a monthly annuity will now receive 50% of what you’re due in a lump sum and the other half in a continued monthly annuity. A communication from the Frontier Benefits Center will be mailed to retirees over the next couple of weeks explaining this. Once again, this benefit only applied to Retirees who retired before December 31st, 1996.
I’d like to recognize the following Members who retired recently:
Robert Paternico retired on March 7, 2021. Bob was a Network Carrier Tech at the time of his retirement and had over 32 years of service.
Dave Knab retired on April 16th, 2021. Dave was a Network Carrier Tech with over 24 years of service.
And most recently, Terry Inscho. Terry retires this month as a Network CO Installer with over 23 years of service.
On behalf of the Union I want to extend my congratulations and thank them all for their years of service and membership to this Union.
This is your President John Pusloskie thanking you for calling your Union tape. And we are CWA STRONG!