AT&T

Employee Pension Plan

Whereas:

• AT&T announced a conversion from their traditional defined benefit pension plan to a cash balance plan as of July 1997. The method of conversion to the cash balance plan has the potential to dramatically reduce the pension of 30,000 AT&T employees. Longer service employees retain all benefits but pension benefits are frozen with no growth for up to 13 years. By depriving long term workers of the benefit of their increased years of service and their peak earning years, employers break the explicit promises made in the traditional defined benefit pension plan.
  

• Top executives also enjoying a non-qualified pension plan plus stock options for the bulk of their retirement package are less affected. AT&T stated in the 1999 Shareholder Booklet that their intent is to "provide competitive compensation to the employees and executives who continue to serve the Company." Executives continue to receive multimillion-dollar compensation packages despite the reduction of the shareholder dividend and the millions of dollars lost on poor business ventures, while experienced employees have seen no growth in their retirement compensation.
  

• The AT&T employees, conscious of an AT&T brand that took millions of shareholder dollars to establish, have expressed their concerns via email and an educational employee website, http://att.nac.net. Unlike IBM and Bell Atlantic that have both offered concessions, and Kodak, Citibank and Aetna that have offered to "grandfather" affected employees, AT&T has offered nothing.
  

• The employees in AT&T's Management Pension Plan filed a class action lawsuit against AT&T in August 1998. Presently in the discovery phase, it alleges that AT&T violated ERISA and The Age Discrimination in Employment Act in implementing a 1997 conversion to a cash balance pension plan. The court has certified all class members as plaintiffs. If litigation continues, the court may award damages estimated to be in the billions of dollars.
  

• AARP, formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, has filed an amicus brief on behalf of the suing AT&T employees, and in Congressional testimony, called for a full investigation to determine whether cash balance plans violate age discrimination laws.
  

• AT&T Executives claimed the Cash Balance Plan helped address the varying needs of our employees. Cash Balance Plans are not the problem. The problem was caused by AT&T selecting a conversion method which was financially devastating to their most experienced employees. How will AT&T retain the loyalty of talented, motivated employees as times get tougher?

Resolved: The shareholders request that the AT&T Board of Directors adopt the following policy: All employees vested as of Jan 1, 1998 will have the choice of either (1) the long-promised traditional pension plan with base window updates no less than every three years; or (2) the cash balance plan.

Supporting Statement: At the 2001 Annual Meeting, 11.3% of AT&T shareholders, representing 331 million shares, voted in support of this resolution.

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