yea, well, perhaps, but of course you realize, don’t you that all such things as pensions and life insurances have to wait until a certificate of death is issued, and the paperwork is processed, both of which, even in normal circumstances can take quite a while. Naturally, in the meantime, the rent still needs to be paid, the kids still need to eat etc.]
Orignally posted by mswas
Also I don’t think most of these benifits are the life insurance type. I believe a good deal of it comes from fire fighters and police unions/orginizations. I am guessing the average that die on duty per year is around 20, it is easy to see how 400 deaths could deplete that fund quickly.
Gotcha. I was just lost on that-I’m NOT too knowledgible when it comes to math and finances.
So why is this any different from Joe Average, drain cleaner for the Acme Septic Servic. Joe was unfortunate enough to be sucking out a septic tank when the aparatus blew up, killing him in a tragic explosion.
He left a wife and two kids under the age of 4.
He was covered by life insurance by his company. He had a paycheck coming for the last week he worked. Yeah, the guy who owned the septic service probably called the wife to offer his condolences. Maybe he even said something about a few weeks extra pay or something. More likely to happen in a small company.
But Joe’s wife probably just has to make do with what she has. Just like anybody else in life. Rely on family. Pay the rent from savings. Charge your groceries for a few weeks/months.
Thanks to manny we have some actual facts, rather than relying on the stupidity of tv pundits. Another thread about something that amounts to nothing.
manny - Thanks for the inside skinny. As I said in my OP, there are explanations for why money might not be immediately forthcoming. But why a person in charge wouldn’t tell the widow of an employee that, in the form of a letter, or a call from somebody at the company, or return calls after messages have been left … I have more trouble explaining that away.
samclem:
**
Really? Ya think?
The NYC affiliate of my company had offices on several floors of tower 1. For a day and a half the rest of the company didn’t know how many, if any, made it out alive. It took a week for the NYC management to figure out how many did or didn’t make it out, and how many were in the hospital, because all the emergency contact information was lost in the rubble. After a week of phone chains and calling business partners around the country to find out alternate phone numbers it was discovered that 3 were killed and 5 were still in the hospital. That left about 1,892 alive and well (aside from scrapes, bruise, and minor stitching), with 99% of those 1,982 participating in the search for each other and their families.
Now, what if the numbers were reversed, with only 8 survivors? I think we’d still be trying to find families that hadn’t been contacted yet. This week, when we tried to update the emergency contact information in our Chicago offices we have a significant number of people who refused to give an emergency contact person and their information, usually for privacy concerns. Well, we can’t force them to give the information, but if the worst happens it’s going to be hell contacting their families.
Look, I don’t know if the Cantor Fitzgerald CEO is a prick or not, and I don’t know about this widow, either, but I do know that dealing with this sort of mess is not as simple as it appears.
She doesn’t know who she talked to? She didn’t ask “Excuse me, are you Mrs. Lutnick?” Alright, she’s distraught, but it still strikes me as a little weird.
Let’s see… the offices and the NYC employees of this firm are wiped out. The few surviving employees are dealing with their own grief and loss - every bit as painful as Mrs. Fiori’s - and she expects things to be humming along smoothly? Is she waiting around for information to come to her, for the phone to ring, or is she trying to find her family’s copies of documents? By law, her husband should have received information on benefits such as company life insurance and pension benefits for surving spouses. I make sure my husband sees my copies and knows where they are.
Are his paychecks going to continue? That’s a good question. But maybe senior management doesn’t know the answer just yet. If you lose a dozen employees the answer might be “of course” but if you lose 700 the company may not have the financial resources to do this. OK, maybe liquidate the company assets and pay out, but that won’t happen overnight.
How the hell is anyone supposed to attend 700 funerals in a month? Or even a dozen people do this? Yes, she should have gotten a phone call expressing condolences (at the very least - if management has phone numbers for family available) but I just don’t think it’s humanly possible for the company to be represented at that many memorials given the ratio of dead to survivors.
Even on the issue of phone calls - how many phones can a person make in a day? Now, how many phones calls can a person make saying “I’m sorry your husband/wife/brother/sister/son/daughter was killed in an obscene act by derranged fanatics while working for my company”? Mr. Lutnick may be a prick or he may be a saint - but either way, I just don’t see him being able to make a whole lot of such phone calls in a day.
Yeah, that sucks. It’s creepy. Why did that happen? I don’t know. I think I’d at least ask surviving management why, or the bank why, before passing judgement. Maybe the company finances have been frozen for some reason.
There’s a one week delay between the end of my pay period and the time I actually get the money. If my company collapsed into a heap of dust in that interval I wouldn’t be surprised at a delay. Pissed off because I have bills, yes, but not surprised and not necessarily blaming management.
Also, even here in Chicago mail and other delivery was delayed due to September 11. I can only imagine things were worse in NYC. So… were the paychecks “stopped” or was there a delivery problem?
You know, I don’t know that “most WTC companies” are doing this or not. Strictly speaking, a dead employee isn’t automatically entitled to further paychecks. And if there is any question of finances then handing out 700 extra paychecks, however nice that would appear in the short term, may be an irresponsible act and harmful in the long run. The money has to come from somewhere. Worse than receiving no paycheck in these circumstances would be receiving one that bounces
How the fuck is this guy supposed to issue a form letter with his office in ruins? Pull a typewriter out of his bedroom closet? Alright, assuming he has one - does he have a list of employee home addresses available, or were his mailing lists also destroyed in the rubble? While he’s dealing with losses of his own, attending 700 funerals, trying to sort out company finances, and issue 700 extra paychecks himself (because payroll is dead) he is also supposed to enlist his wife/family/maid to help him address, label, seal, and stamp 700 condolence letters around the kitchen table? You do realize that the infrastructure of his business is gone, don’t you? Do you think one man can do the work of 700, or even a dozen?
Now here comes Connie Chung, with an offer of a TV interview that will be broadcast nationally, where he can say “I’m sorry” just once instead of 700 times and possibly reach people whose addresses he doesn’t have – maybe it wasn’t the wisest or most sensitive decision he could have made, but it’s understandable why he might choose it.
I know this may come as a shock, but able-bodied survivors of disasters are expected to take some initiative in approaching various agencies and saying “I need help”. The agencies have been saying “we’re at this location, come on down”. This week a lot of these agencies realized a whole bunch of people weren’t coming forward and decided to break with their standard operating procedures and start trying to contact survivors and families of the dead instead of waiting for them to come to them. Mrs. Fiori hasn’t been singled out for mistreatment - in fact, having someone contact her instead of waiting for her to contact them is highly unusual and doesn’t happen in such disasters as hurricaines and earthquakes.
Well, I hope you used some thought in donating and picked a legimate agency. Also, you do realize that the money given to the firefighters and policemen’s funds will not be going to the “Mrs. Fiori’s”, but just to firefighter’s/policemen’s families? Other charities will give to anyone affected by the obscene act.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101011008-176964,00.html
I thought this link would be relevant. Especially the second paragraph where it talks about Cantor Fitzgerald.
Erek
One of the questions that keep cropping up in my mind is that some family situations aren’t so neat and simple as “Send a form letter to the surviving spouse.” Besides the obvious problem of not having a fucking address at all ( thanks to your office being vaporized) how do you know who the next of kin really is? Who do you issue the relief to? What if the employee is gay and doesn’t have a “legal” spouse? What if he/she isn’t married–which parent do you contact, say, if the parents are not together? What do you do about divorced or separated employees?
On one level, I say “This is a disaster. Worry about the legal intricacies later–just help the dependents and heirs NOW.” But it’s gotta weigh heavily on the minds of the practical. And the accountants. And the lawyers. It’d give me pause.
Issuing a paycheck might not help, anyway. Ever tried to cash a dead person’s check? It’s a pain in the ass even with a death certificate. Electronic deposits help, but if the family didn’t have a joint account they’re probably at square one anyway. I hope, of course, that New York area banks are relaxing some of the more onerous rules under the circumstances.
No, IMHO is is not possible at all, and I’ll tell you why. While I’ll readily agree with you that unless C.F. did off-site storage of all personnel files, a lot of THEIR files were lost, that company in no way existed in a vacuum.
You work for C.F.? You have the following routes that, while usually protected for member privacy could surely be accessed by C.F. attorney’s in this case:
Health Care Providers. They know who you are, where you live, your social security #, the name of your doctor.
Life Insurance Companies.
Human Resources Dept. That may have been lost here, but as I say, any company of any size would likely have a few TerraByte disks burned somewhere and stored offsite, in case of catastrophic loss.
There are ways to gather data. Yeah, not in the first few days to be sure. Too many people were dealing with the shock on a personal as well as professional level. But as the days wore on, they could have surely done some work to contact EVERYONE without relying on Connie Chung, et al.
It smacks as much of poor planning as it does of cold corporate American operations. And, FYI, the New York State legislature is working on an emergency law ( unless it was passed already?? ) to waive the wait time on the issuance of a death certificate when a body is not present. It might not be days, but it won’t be years before family members can declare a loved one dead, and take the practical steps that follow that declaration.
The whole thing makes me so damned sick.
Cartooniverse
If your health insurance company was Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield though, that wouldn’t work too well - their offices were in the WTC. As were the New York offices of AON. And those are just the two where I knew people, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other “health care providers” and life insurance providers and various other providers whose offices are now in ruins.
If Cantor Fitzgerald was in a building off by itself and that building collapsed that would be one thing - but the WTC towers weren’t normal office buildings. So… if your company and your health insurance company and your life insurance company and your accountant and your legal firm and any number of other businessness you depended on were in the building… well, that’s quite a mess, now isn’t it?
Which is, in no way, an apology for anyone being an insensitive bastard but sometimes what appears to be insensitivity and/or bastardness isn’t always.
Update:
According to this article in today’s New York Times, Cantor Fitzgerald (CF) is making good on the promises its CEO, Howard Lutnick, made in several TV interviews last month.
[ul]
[li]CF is paying $45 million in bonuses to WTC families.[/li][li]Checks are going to non-sales commissioned employees’ families.[/li][li]Bonuses for dead commissioned employees’ families will be distributed before Thanksgiving.[/li][li]The bonuses will be equal to last year’s plus any accumulated 2001 vacation time, but no family will receive less than $5000.[/li][li]Any outstanding stock options and 401(k) benefits for the dead have been fully vested.[/li][li]CF has said it will allocate 25 percent of the firm’s profits–typically $140 to $160 million–over the next five years to victims’ families.[/li][/ul]
I don’t know if this will mean anything to Milo or anyone else, but I saw Lutnick last night in an interview on a Discovery Health special dealing with Post Traumatic Stress.
The man was a mess. He talked about the seven hundred tragedies that affected him personally through a broken and trembling voice, pausing for occasional gulps of air, all the while constantly wiping his tear-soaked face with both hands. Among the victims were his own brother. He began the very day of the massacre trying to contact as many people as he could, all while dealing with his own incredible losses.
Considering the smarmy and shameless self-promotion of O’Reilly, I wouldn’t doubt one bit but what he selected and edited pieces of an interview with Lutnick in order to make his own myopic, preconceived point. O’Reilly is a ratings huckster. Nothing more.
And Lutnick is as much a victim as anyone.
Warning - controversial rant ahead, from a resident of Battery Park City living in a building which lost 7 residents in the WTC collapse, including to VPs of major corporations. I am in no way connected with CF, don’t know a soul who worked there and only knew that the company existed from my many visits to the WTC.
I have, however, been a human resources professional for my entire career, including a time spent for a major multinational industrial firm that experienced a nasty accident which led to the instantaneous deaths of 28 employees whose bodies were not able to be recovered. I know what benefits the company gave those surviving families, and know that it was nothing like what the Cantor Fitzgerald survivors will be getting, even though in that case, the company was (indirectly) responsible for the deaths, and was extremely generous to the families, especially in comparison to their competitors’ responses in similar incidents.
So I’ve looked at the package that the Cantor Fitzgerald surviving widows/widowers are going get, and I see that they’re going to be well taken care of, much better than most. The more I see, especially in comparison to what workers from other companies and the service industry people are going to be getting, and I’m getting sick and tired of the whining and the bitching.
In most cases, if your spouse died while at work, even if his place of work blew up or was bombed, there would be a life insurance payout. There may be the option for the family to continue health insurance coverage – with payments - for a period of time following the death. A final paycheck would be issued, including pay for any banked vacation or personal time, and there would be a cash out of 401k or other retirement plans. If there were some liability from the corporation or the owners of the worksite, there may be a separate insurance settlement due there, or fodder for a lawsuit, but that wouldn’t have any connection to the employer. In any case, getting all of that wrapped up would still take a while, a few weeks, at least, and that’s even if there were no issues with proof of kinship or death, and taking for granted that the human resource department was not affected (records or personnel-wise) in the incident which caused the death.
The survivors would be highly unlikely to get cash benefits from any special funds, potential scholarships for their kids (unless there was a union involved with special benefits for those who died at work) pro rata bonuses, or any such. It’s almost a certainty that there wouldn’t be a charitable fund from a national agency which might also pay out some cash.
They would have to find a way to make due with the savings and provisions that were made “just in case” until benefits kicked in. Lifestyles may have to be changed, and if there are no savings, then money may need to be borrowed, and family and friends relied upon for a while. There might get survivor benefits for the kids from Social Security, but that would be offset $1 for every $2 earned above $12,000 a year, so if the surviving spouse also had a career that paid anything decent, there would probably not be any Social Security for the kids at all.
It would hurt, not just emotionally, but financially, but death has a way of doing that, and the great majority of people don’t have a CEO to bitch about being tightfisted over some (probably unearned) cash that they feel is coming to them after that death.
It isn’t Howard Lutnick’s fault that 700 of his employees are dead, and it isn’t his responsibility to do anything above and beyond the law and existing plans to take care of the people that they left behind – but he’s doing it anyway. He didn’t force anyone to work for him, and he didn’t fly a plane into the building. He didn’t kill them, he didn’t create the situation which led to their death, save choosing to locate his company in a building which logic dictated was a giant deathtrap – they were adults who chose to work there nevertheless.
It is pure happenstance – a quirk of school scheduling for his son’ first day of kindergarten – that was the difference between Lutnick being alive and being one of the statistics, and if he were dead, the CF families would undoubtedly be even worse off than they are because he has directed and spearheaded every effort to do everything that’s been done for them thus far.
This man is not a villain. He doesn’t have a responsibility – legally, professionally or morally – to come up with extra compensation for these families because of the acts of terrorists. It would’ve been nice if he could have given each family a phone call, or attended each of the funerals – those were his friends and coworkers, after all, and he needs to mourn their loss too – but that’s 2,000 hours (roughtly speaking) that are better spent trying to save his company so that he can fulfill all of the promises he’s made to those families. He has an incredible task ahead of him and a horrible crisis behind him, and he’s going above and beyond necessity to help these people, and he’s still being villified with the help of sensationalistic media types, and that plainly sucks.
The whole thing sucks, but this Veruca Salt “Give it to me now!” crap has got to go, in a big way.