UAW retirees are fighting to save Social Security for future generations, and they’re
Not about to be bamboozled!
In 1997 Charlene Block started an e-mail network to help get the word out to Connecticut seniors about issues affecting them.
As president of the state’s Council of Senior Citizens chapter, she compiled about a dozen contacts. By the end of last year, there were 65,000.
“We built a great network with the help of our UAW retiree chapters, the AFL-CIO state affiliates and other senior groups,” said Block. “We laid the groundwork, developed workshops around the issues and trained folks from all walks of life.”
Now that’s grassroots activism at its finest.
A UAW Local 626 retiree who worked at the now shuttered New Departure Hyatt plant in Bristol, Block and her husband of 50 years, George, recently moved to North Carolina. But her activism continues, especially when it comes to fighting Social Security privatization.
“Since 1935 the GOP has set out to repeal FDR’s New Deal in its entirety,” said Block of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s programs. “In 1965 they didn’t want Medicare to pass. Since then there’s been a gradual whittling away of the middle class, along with cuts in benefits for older Americans.
“If this continues, we’ll have bread lines, more homeless and poor families like we did in the 1930s. Just look at how many jobs young people have to work now, and they’re not good UAW jobs,” added the 67-year-old grandmother of four who retired in 1991.
Keep the box locked
Charles Moyles worked at New Departure for 25 years.
As vice chair of his retiree group, he has a similar take on Bush’s scheme.
“What bothers me is that once they touch it, they’ll try to dismantle the whole thing. I worry about my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren,” said Moyles, an 80-year-old Army veteran who retired in 1990 and lives near New Haven.
Moyles wrote his legislators, including Democratic Sens. Christopher Dodd and Joseph Lieberman, denouncing privatization.
“The thing is this won’t hurt my wife and me; we’re old. But they’re trying to bamboozle people 55 and over that they won’t be affected by this,” he said. “My next-door neighbor is 52 and retired. He’s a Republican looking at it from the other side now.”
Seventy-year-old Earl Henry agrees. “They won’t mess with me, but
when you look at the 20-, 30- and 40-year-olds, this is going to hurt them,” said
Henry, a UAW Local 598 retiree who worked “34.6 years” at General
Motors’ Fisher Body No. 2 plant in Flint and retired in 1988.
He and his wife of 48 years, Roberta, live in Elmira, Mich., where Henry chairs
his area retiree council and is vice chair of his county’s Democratic Party.
In March, Henry wrote a column for the (Gaylord) Herald Times about the effects of Social Security privatization on seniors. “Instead of this disastrous approach, it would be much easier and cheaper simply to make minor modifications in the financing of the current Social Security system,” he wrote.
One change, Henry believes, is to lift the payroll tax cap so wealthy individuals pay taxes on all their wages, just as most workers do.
Don’t gamble your future
Gilbert Williams, 74, still lives in the Walton, N.Y., dairy farm country where he grew up. In February Williams wrote a guest commentary for the (Oneonta) Daily Star headlined, “Worthy programs mustn’t be trashed.”
“The market is a lot safer than the horse races, but putting your future in either is just crazy,” wrote the UAW Local 365 retiree.
Williams worked 13 years at Glen Components in Long Island before losing his job after the company moved to Florida. He couldn’t find another UAW job, so he worked as foreman at a nonunion shop for 10 years — until it moved to Florida.
Plagued by health problems, Williams retired in 1994 and receives Social Security, his main source of income in addition to a modest UAW-negotiated pension.
“Joan, my wife of 47 years, and I always thought that if we lived to be in our 80s, we’d be comfortable. But things cost a lot more these days and it’s not easy,” said the father of five and grandfather to a dozen.
Charlene Block says her 40-year-old daughter doesn’t believe Social Security will be around when she retires.
“I tell her if we don’t mess it up now, it will be there for you,” Block said.
