Congressional Democrats are calling on Vice President Cheney to personally compensate hundreds of former Halliburton Co. employees who lost millions of dollars in pension payouts when Halliburton sold a subsidiary under Cheney's leadership, the Washington Post reports.
Halliburton has offered employees of its former subsidiary, Dresser-Rand, payments that are on average $50,000 less than expected, according to an employee representative.
The Post reports that the shortfall comes from Halliburton's decision not to continue to make pension fund contributions for the workers after the unit was sold to Ingersoll-Rand in February 2000.
Ingersoll-Rand says Halliburton should compensate the workers for the shortfall; Halliburton says it's Ingersoll-Rand's responsibility.
After details of the Dresser-Rand pensions were published in The New York Times, Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary committee, wrote to Cheney accusing him of "bending the rules to make millions of dollars while the hardworking employees under your watch are cheated out of millions of dollars."
Cheney spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise said the vice president's office had not yet received Conyers's letter.
According to the Post, Cheney made an $18.5 million profit selling his Halliburton shares in August 2000. That sum was part of more than $35 million Cheney made from the energy company in cash and stock in five years at its helm.
When Halliburton's Dresser Industries unit sold its majority stake in Dresser-Rand to Ingersoll-Rand in 2000, Halliburton stopped covering 440 salaried employees under Dresser's pension plan because they were no longer Dresser employees. Three hundred of the workers who were under 55 and had been eligible for an enhanced early retirement benefit lost that privilege when the unit was sold. Some of the 440 have subsequently retired.
