National Telephone Retirees Pick Annapolis For 2013 Annual Convention
The City of Annapolis has been selected to host the 2013 annual convention of one of the nation’s largest retiree organizations. The 128,000 member Association of BellTel Retirees Inc., representing telephone industry retirees from across all 50 states and six foreign countries, will host its 17th annual national membership convention at the DoubleTree Hotel on April 18 and 19, 2013.
The event is expected to attract hundreds of retirees of Verizon and the companies that were merged under its umbrella. Many retirees and spouses participating in the annual reunion and its festivities are expected to begin arriving April 17th and 18th. The gathering will be capped off on Friday, April 19 with a continental breakfast beginning at 8:30 a.m., followed by a two-hour program, where retirees will discuss concerns about the protection of their pensions and earned benefits.
Founded in 1996, the Association of BellTel Retirees is a non-profit advocacy group working for the protection of former Bell System retirees’ pensions and earned benefits. Its members include more than 128,000 retirees from the old Bell System including Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone, NYNEX, New York Telephone, New Jersey Bell, Bell Atlantic, Bell of Pennsylvania, Diamond State Telephone, New England Telephone, MCI and GTE, all now under the Verizon corporate umbrella, as well as the Verizon spin-off IDEARC/SuperMedia. The group was founded by a handful of retirees in 1995 as a means to stand up to their former employer on retiree economic issues and has grown to be a national powerhouse. Retirees are presently concerned that in 2012 Verizon converted 41,000 of their Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) protected pensions into unprotected insurance company annuities.
“The Chesapeake and Potomac region is the heart of the territory where tens of thousands of telephone company retirees who are our members reside,” said C. William Jones, President and Co-founder of the Retiree Association. “The Association of BellTel Retirees’ purpose has been to advocate for and serve as the voice for many thousands of retirees scattered across the nation who are concerned about the future of the pensions and benefits they worked a lifetime to fund.” For many years, Mr. Jones was a resident of Easton, Maryland.
For more information about the Association of BellTel Retirees or if you are a telephone retiree wishing to attend, call toll-free (800) 261-9222, email Association@BellTelRetirees.Org or visit online at www.BellTelRetirees.org. Reservations are required to attend.
