NATION : Senator Blasts ‘Pension Raids’

WASHINGTON — Workers who have given years of loyalty to their employers are being stripped of retirement benefits by “a stampede of corporate greed,” the chairman of a Senate panel investigating “pension raids” said today.

“All over this country companies have been terminating (pension) plans to get at the money without regard to the retirement security that has been promised to millions of workers and retirees,” said Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), chairman of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee’s labor panel.

The hearing focused on firms in Kansas and California whose owners turned over pension funds to First Executive Corp., a financially troubled, Los Angeles-based insurance company invested heavily in junk bonds.

Testifying at the hearing, employees of both Coleman Co. of Wichita, Kan., and Pacific Lumber Co. of Scotia, Calif., said the reported instability of First Executive raised fears that they would lose their pensions or at least cost-of-living increases.