Project Scroll Research Note 2026-54: The Studebaker pension figures of 2,900 and "more than 4,000" traced to the Senate hearing at South Bend of 4 June 1971

When Studebaker closed its South Bend plant in December 1963, many of its workers lost all or most of their pensions, and the case became the one reformers cited for the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. The figures most often repeated, 2,900 workers who received nothing and about 4,000 who received about 15 percent, go back at least to a hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging held at South Bend on 4 June 1971. There Senator Vance Hartke said that "the failure of 2,900 Studebaker workers to receive any pension payment whatsoever is wrong," and that "more than 4,000 other Studebaker employees between the ages of 40 and 59 received only 15 percent" of the pensions due them. A telegram from the UAW's president, Leonard Woodcock, printed in the same hearing, gave the union's count: "Of 11,000 active workers at Studebaker 2900 lost all pension entitlements, and 4500, average age 52, average service 23 years, lost all but 15% of their pension entitlements." Project Scroll Research Note 2026-54, version 1. The note sets out the record quoted, where it is held, what it changes, its limits, and what was searched before calling it new. Web version: projectscroll.com/discoveries/notes/2026-54/.