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Ex-Enron workers may get $29 mn deal

One group of former Enron workers said a tentative agreement has been worked out to provide additional severance payments averaging $7,000 to 4,200 Enron Corp employees fired in December, but a labor union source said members were holding out for more.

A lawyer for the AFL-CIO labor union federation, which represents some of the laid-off workers, said a report on the deal in the Houston Chronicle was not correct, while the head of the Severed Enron Employees Coalition said his sources indicated that it was.

Although talks are not final, the former workers and the creditors committee for Enron's Chapter 11 bankruptcy have agreed to a total payment of about $29 million, with only a formula for parceling out the money to be settled, the Houston Chronicle reported in a story that did not name its sources.

"There is no settlement...there is not even a tentative agreement," attorney Damon Silvers told Reuters. "We've pushed people to hold out for as much as possible."

"My source in bankruptcy court says the report is correct...they reached a tentative deal," said SEEC chairman Roy Jordan.

"It's not as much as we'd hoped for, but more than we expected at this point," he said of the reported numbers.

An Enron spokeswoman said the company would not comment.

The workers were laid off after Enron declared bankruptcy on Decemebr 2 amid disclosures it had cooked the books by hiding debt and inflated profits through off-the-book transactions.

The company, once the largest energy trader, is trying to reorganise into a smaller natural gas transporter.

The laid-off employees received about $5,500 in previous severance payments, but in many cases that was well below what they were entitled to under Enron policies.

Many of the company's workers were wiped out financially because their pension plans were heavily invested in Enron stock, now virtually worthless.

Jordan said he had not polled former Enron workers recently to find out how many had found new jobs, but that there were still some who needed cash.

"We have one that we were trying to find her a job -- a single mother, two kids, has been out of work since December," he said.

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