In the wake of the company's collapse, the bosses fired some 4,300 of 7,500 Houston-area employees, leaving them without health insurance and with a worthless 401(k) retirement fund.

Many stories of angry and distressed unemployed Enron workers have filled the newspapers and TV and radio stations here. A man whose wife needed treatment for her illness asked where he would get the money with no health insurance, as did a single mother with an asthmatic son whose medicines are very expensive. A secretary who had worked 28 years for the company said she lost her entire retirement fund, which was in a 401(k) plan invested in now worthless company stock.

Employees, who were not permitted to divest themselves of their Enron stock, were forced to watch their pensions disappear as the company stock took a dive. To add insult to injury, while laid-off workers were offered a $4,500 severance package, top Enron executives and directors had sold their stock earlier for hundreds of millions of dollars. In addition, just days before the bankruptcy filing, "retention bonuses" worth $55 million were given to 500 employees. Eleven received payments of between $500,000 and $5 million.

At a meeting with state and federal officials to find out their entitlements, some laid-off workers asked, "What is the government doing to make sure Enron lives up to its contractual commitments and legal obligations to its current and former workers?"

The best answer they got was, "We're looking into it."

Enron, which started as a natural gas pipeline company, became the world's largest buyer and seller in the deregulated market for electricity and natural gas. Much of its profit was made by buying and selling energy many times over, getting the difference between the buyers' bids and sellers' prices. It also expanded far beyond energy markets, speculating in "complex"--that is, risky--types of paper trading including "weather derivatives," a form of insurance used to cover weather-related losses. The company became more of a financial services conglomerate handling billions of dollars for wealthy investors. As a laid-off trader told the Wall St. Journal December 11, he and his colleagues saw it as "an investment bank with an energy-company front."

Ranked the country's number seven company on the Fortune 500 before its collapse with annual revenue of $100 billion dollars and 21,000 employees, Enron started unraveling in the last couple of months when, among other things, it reported big third-quarter losses and lowered its reported income from 1997 on by $586 million.

Dynegy Inc., a competitor of Enron, offered to buy Enron on November 9 for more than $8 billion in stock. But Dynegy said they backed out of the merger after a series of disclosures showed Enron's dismal financial picture. Enron is now suing Dynegy.

Enron's meltdown has capitalist politicians scrambling. Republican chairman of the House Commerce Committee William Tauzin is calling for an investigation and hearings. Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the committee, warned, "There are likely other ticking time bombs out there with smoke-and-mirror earnings."

Lea Sherman is a meat packer in Houston.  
 
 
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