Chapter Highlight | Avaya Retirees Chapter

Vern Larson, Avaya Retirees Chapter President

Avaya, a corporate telecommunications company, was created on October 2, 2000, as a spin-off from Lucent Technologies. The NRLN Avaya Retirees Chapter was formed in April 2016 because retirees were concerned that their pension plan was underfunded by 30 percent. 

On Jan.19, 2017, Avaya filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy the first of two times. The bankruptcy court accepted Avaya’s petition to terminate its pension plan for management employees and retirees. (The pension plan for union employees and retirees was not terminated. But the union and Avaya recently negotiated to an impasse and benefits were lost.)

Over the months and years following the pension plan termination the PBGC officials I met during my first NRLN fly-in September 2016 were very valuable sources for information for Chapter members on how the PBGC would administer the takeover of our pension plan. I exchanged countless emails and had numerous phone calls with my PBGC contacts. 

This relationship provided a constant follow up of information from the PBGC and me to Chapter members. Because NRLN provides and maintains an Avaya Retirees Chapter website and email services for its’ Chapters, I was able to advise Avaya retirees immediately about what they needed to know about the future of their retirement income.

I can’t imagine how much more terrible it would have been to go through the Avaya bankruptcy without the help the NRLN provided. 

The NRLN’s assistance did not end with the conclusion of the bankruptcy process and the pension benefits awarded from the PBGC.  

Many Avaya retirees are under age 65 and therefore not yet eligible for Medicare. The federal Health Coverage Tax Credit (HCTC) program helped Avaya and other retirees who lost their health care coverage due to bankruptcy. Up until January 1, 2022, when Congress did not extend HCTC, the program had provided a refundable tax credit of 72.5% for qualified health insurance premiums for eligible individuals between the ages of 55 and 64 and their families. The NRLN has continued to lobby members of Congress to restore HCTC and make it permanent.

The best decision a group of Avaya retirees ever made was to form an NRLN Chapter.