WARREN Retirement funds open to CSC workers

Participants can put their money in another retirement account or get cash.
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
WARREN -- CSC Ltd. workers left jobless when the Warren steel mill went out of business in the spring of 2001 can finally get their hands on the money they socked away in retirement accounts.
Funds from four CSC employee investment plans have been locked down since Jan. 1, 2002, to allow the Internal Revenue Service time to terminate the plans.
That process was completed in March, said Diane Wilcox, a staff attorney for the Cleveland law firm that handled CSC's bankruptcy case, and workers can now have access to their money.
She estimated that there's about $8 million set aside in the two 401(k) plans and two defined contribution plans. The 401(k) plans were funded by employee payroll savings, she said, and the defined contribution plans were funded by the company for participating employees.
Standard procedure
It is customary for distributions to be suspended during the IRS termination process, Wilcox said, but the process took longer than usual for CSC because it coincided with a routine, nationwide IRS screening of all retirement investment plans.
"It was an unfortunate coincidence that everybody's plans must be updated, and all those plans were filed on the same date that the CSC termination request was filed," she said. "That's why it took so long."
State Rep. Tim Ryan, D-17th, planned a press conference today to announce that the funds are now accessible.
Ryan's office had been monitoring the IRS termination process after the congressman began getting complaints about the situation from former CSC workers.
Letters were mailed in May notifying the 87 former salaried employees and about 300 former union employees that their funds were available, Wilcox said, but some workers have complained they did not receive the notification.
Former CSC employees who have funds in any of the plans should call CIGNA, the plans' third-party administrator, at (800) 253-2287 between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. They should have their Social Security number and PIN number available when they call.
Options for money
Participants do not have the option to leave their money where it is.
Wilcox said CIGNA distribution specialists will explain options, which include rolling the funds over to another retirement plan or a cash distribution. CIGNA will distribute the funds, minus any taxes owed, to any participant who fails to contact its office by the first week of September.
For Wilcox, the release of the retirement funds is the culmination of 18 months of labor, most of which she did free of charge after her regular workday at Baker & amp; Hostetler, where she's been a staff attorney specializing in employee-benefits law since 1993.
The project fell to her by default because the attorney handling the CSC case was on vacation at the time. She did the work for free because CSC had no cash left to pay for it by the time the application for plan termination was filed with the IRS.
CSC, once the region's fourth-largest industrial employer, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2001 and liquidated in October of that year, idling 1,300.
vinarsky@vindy.com