Honeywell retirees seek unspecified help from South Bend council

July 24--SOUTH BEND -- A week before they're scheduled to lose their health insurance, Bendix, Allied Signal and Honeywell Corp. retirees Monday night turned to the city's common council in a last-ditch plea for help.

They spoke during "Privilege of the Floor," the time at the end of each meeting when members of the public can speak for up to three minutes on any matter that isn't listed on that meeting's agenda.

"We kept our part of the bargain here in South Bend, Indiana," Tom Zmyslo, chair of United Auto Workers Local 9 retirees, told council members. "We worked for 25, 35, 45, 50 years for this corporation and I'm asking you tonight to back the people of this community. Honeywell is a ruthless corporation.

"The South Bend Common Council needs to take a stand and I ask you to examine your relationship with this corporation," he said. "This council and those before you have given a lot of breaks to this corporation. They threw our people under the bus."

Several in the audience applauded.

Larry Alexander, 71, of Mishawaka, next took the podium.

"Thirty-seven years I worked at that place, with the understanding that I had health care I wouldn't have to worry about when I retired," Alexander said. "Low and behold, to go from Bendix, a compassionate company, that when my father died out there, I was a month and a day old, and they offered my mother a job. That's when it was Bendix."

Alexander said he will have to take $4,000 to $5,000 out of his pension for health insurance premiums that he could otherwise be spending in the community.

Before the meeting, Zmyslo said it's likely a foregone conclusion that retirees' Honeywell health plan benefits will end July 31 as planned by the company.

Zmyslo said he didn't yet know what tax incentives Honeywell is now receiving from the city, if any, but he hoped the council would explore whether the company is receiving any, and if so, decide whether that should continue in light of the company's treatment of retirees. He also criticized Honeywell's plan to soon move about 20 local jobs to a supplier in Turkey.

Honeywell officials could not be reached for comment Monday night. But spokesman Scott Sayres recently defended ending retiree health care in a statement to The Tribune. Under a Detroit federal court judge's order, Honeywell could have ended retirees' coverage March 31 but opted to let them keep their coverage four additional months while they found other health plans.

Neither of those arguments impressed Zmyslo.

"Yes, they've been taking this away from other Honeywell facilities, chipping away at it for several years," Zmyslo said. "Are we just supposed to lay down too? We worked there for many years. We've got a lot of sicknesses and health problems because of the chemicals, asbestos and all the things we were faced with working in that plant. Now they're dumping us out and we've got to go out and buy insurance and have somebody else cover us."

Zmyslo said there are some plans "that are comparable but not better." Retirees older than 65 can enroll in supplemental Medicare plans that likely cost a little more than the monthly premiums retirees have been paying, but he noted that the federal court judge has ruled Honeywell must reimburse retirees for the premiums they have been paying in recent years. The company had arbitrarily started withholding the premiums from their pension checks about eight years ago, he said.

Zmyslo said he and his wife, who are older than 65, have been paying a combined $278 per month for the Honeywell health plan and will pay about $350 per month under a private plan. But retirees who are younger than 65, and some workers heeded Honeywell's advice to retire before the 2016 contract took effect to avoid losing their benefits. Those younger retirees are looking at paying $3,000 to $5,000 per month for a couple on the private market, Zmyslo said.

Earlier Monday, James Mueller, the city's executive director of community investment, said he was not immediately able to find any public incentives Honeywell is now receiving from the city, such as property tax abatements, tax incremental financing district cash or revolving loans.

The last tax abatement Honeywell received appeared to be in 2001, a 10-year break that the council agreed to make retroactive to 1997, despite the city's ordinance that only allows abatements on buildings before they are built.

In 2004, Honeywell was one of five companies the council called in to explain why it had not lived up to job creation pledges in exchange for property tax breaks. In April 1997 and again in April 1999, the company received abatements on its proposed purchase of $66.7 million in equipment, but it only ended up acquiring and installing $51.8 million worth.

Honeywell then said the new equipment would result in 28 new jobs, but by June 2004 it actually had cut its local employment from 866 in 1997 to 657, or by 229 workers, a quarter of its work force. Then-chief financial officer Pete Fera attributed the decline to the after-effects of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that crippled the airline industry, the primary market for Honeywell's aircraft landing systems.

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