CORRE Blog

It is expected that the Tennessee Congressional Delegation, the DOE, and the contractors will announce in the next week or so that the Medicare Part D supplement will be shared with the contractor retirees. In other words, it is expected that on the order of one-half of the supplement will go to the company to pay for its part of medical costs and one- half will go to pay for retiree costs. Although exact figures are not available, the monthly payment of a retiree should be reduced significantly. This will be a reversal of DOE policy that will have been attained by the diligence of Senator Alexander and his staff and the Tennessee congressional delegation.

This would be a victory for retirees as CORRE leaders have maintained and insisted all along that one half of any supplement should go to retirees, thus maintaining the historic 50-50 split of medical costs. CORRE leadership has long felt that this was the intent of Congress when Part D was enacted by Congress and has been tenacious in following up on this issue. Senator Alexander and the Tennessee Delegation in Congress have worked diligently on behalf of Oak Ridge contractor retirees to change the DOE policies and to bring this benefit. It is expected that the contractors will extend this 50-50 sharing benefit to their retirees.

Now, from the perspective of the retirees, the Tennessee delegation needs to renew its efforts for attaining equitable adjustments and the spousal option for retirees. CORRE sees no let up in the pressure for DOE to right the wrongs and end the discriminatory actions against Tennesseans that have been practiced for so many years by DOE. Again, CORRE is looking to the leadership of Senator Alexander and the Tennessee delegation to get that job done.

Pete Lotts
Chair
Government Relations Committee
CORRE

 Bob Henderson and Alfred Brooks write:

Dub Shults, a 1994 retiree, has published a thoughtful guest column in Sunday's News Sentinel (4/20/08) which is worth reading: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/apr/20/oak-ridge-retirees-deserve-ra ise/ and publicizing further. Bob and I suggest that you send the above link to friends, editors of other newspapers including weeklies, and to your local legislators asking for their proactive support on this matter. Letters to the N-S would also be in order. We need what Bob has called a blitz.

Alfred Brooks suggested I post this for your information.

  The HJR 1006 resolution urging the TN Legislature and others to support the CORRE pension plans can be found at : http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/bills/currentga/BILL/HJR1006.pdf

Dub Shults has an article in today' s Knoxville News Sentinel on the lack of pension adjustments for Oak Ridge retirees.  Dub gets to the point:
"Here is a headline that I would like to see somewhere, sometime: "DOE contractor retirees win pension adjustment." Reminds me of the Peyton Manning TV commercial where he says, "It ain't gonna happen."

The fact is, DOE and its contractor organizations continue to delay and deny requests by local retirees for a pension adjustment, even though one is needed, deserved, reasonable, just and affordable and would require no new appropriation of federal money."

Read Dub's article on the KNS website.

That is the message of a letter from Harold F. Cornett to the Oak Ridger on April 17, 2008. Here is an excerpt from his letter: "DOE has been a thorn in the side of the plant workers since the early years of Oak Ridge. They have yet to honor or respect those of us who built and operated the plants through the productive times. Now that we are retired and inadequately compensated, their attitude is if they can't swim then let them drown and good riddance."

Monday, I told you that B&W was dropping the Newsletter we have enjoyed for years. I suggested it was probably a cost cutting action. Below is an exerpt from Frank Munger's blog. As you can see, the move was indeed about saving money - $16,000. I think the B&W budget is only about $900,000,000. So clearly, the $16,000 is crucial to the success of the B&W mission at Y-12.  

-The Editor

ps: Thanks for helping Frank!

Bill Wilburn, a B&W spokesman, said the move was about saving money and was not a negative action against CORRE.

"The retiree newsletter was discontinued as a cost-saving measure and because it was providing information that was often redundant to information sent to retirees by the B&W Y-12 Human Capital organization," Wilburn said in a statement by e-mail

He said the cost saving was more than $16,000 per year.

"Additionally, when the retiree newsletter was started, the retiree group CORRE did not have its own Web site through which it could provide information to its members," Wilburn said.

Bob Henderson provides below a detailed memo regarding Representative Davis' recent visit to Harriman. -The Editor

On Wednesday, March 26th, Congressman Lincoln Davis, Representative of the 4th District held a "Town Hall" meeting in Harriman to hear from his constituents in Roane County.

There was a very large turnout at the Utopia Cafe. I'd estimate there were more than 150 persons in attendance to talk about a variety of concerns. Tom Lemons, a CORRE board member, was there as was former CORRE board member Bill Wilcox. There were a number of other Oak Ridge retirees in attendance, but I didn't recognize any of them.

The first comment made, after some brief intro comments by Rep. Davis was by Frank Williams, Jr. of Kingston who said he had retired in 1984 after 37 years of service at the X-10 site. He mentioned that he had been married 62 years. Frank asked Rep. Davis to help get something done about the pensions for OR retirees. He said the increasing costs of medicine,food and gas, in particular, was really making those on pensions suffer. Frank mentioned that he was a member of CORRE. In response to Williams' remarks, Hal Butler of Kingston told Rep. Davis that he (Butler) had written a letter to the editor of the Roane County News that was published in the Wednesday, March 26th edition of the paper about CORRE: Pension hike long overdue.

I have been told that B&W Technical Services (formerly known as BWXT) will no longer publish and distribute the Retirement News. I suspect it may be a cost saving action; I'm reluctant to think it because they just don't want to worry about retirees.

CORRE does have other means of communicating. Those means include an electronic newsletter, a newsletter mailing, its website, and this blog. 

I've had a couple of comments regarding Frank Munger's blog articles (which you can easily accrss by scrolling down the right side of this page).

This past Tuesday, Frank published a chart of new hires at Y-12. A couple of weeks ago, he published the same type chart for new hires at ORNL. A CORRE member noted that ORNL has hired over 2000 new employees since 2001 and Y-12 has hired over 2500 new employees since the year 2000. Perhaps not all these are full-time and perhaps not all are eligible for a pension (though I don't know why they wouldn't). But one could reasonably assume that well more than half, say 2500 to 3000, have come to work expecting to have a pension when they retire.

Is it possible that DOE and its contractors realize that without the pension fund surplus they would need to immediately begin contributing to the pension fund to account for these new employees? Or is it possible they are thinking the pension fund surplus will take care of these people as long as they don't use part of the surplus to improve the pensions of current retirees.

What do you think? 

Nominations for CORRE Board members will open April 1 and close June 1. Lou Dunlap chairs the nominating committee. You can send your nominations to Lou by E-mail (loudunlap1@comcast.net) or call her (483-9361).

Be sure the person you nominate will serve if elected.

Board members will be elected at the annual meeting which will be held in the early fall.

Congressman Lincoln Davis will be at the Utopia Cafe in Kingston next Wednesday, the 26th, at 3:00. He will stay until about 4:30

Stop by and let him know of your concerns about the retirees' plight.

I hope you got a copy of the first mailing of the CORRE newsletter. It contains much information that will be of interest to you.

Send me a note and let us know what you think about it, or what else needs to be included.

If you have not gotten a copy, you can let me know at this blog or you can mail a note to

CORRE

PO Box 4266

Oak Ridge, TN 37831-4266

The mayors of Oak Ridge and Roane and Anderson Counties sent a letter to U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, asking for his help in getting better benefits for CORRE retirees.

Oak Ridge mayor Tom Beehan; Rex Lynch, Anderson County mayor; and Mike Farmer, mayor of Roane County jointly wrote and signed the letter.

In part it said:

"Contractor employees in Oak ridge have had for many years an inferior retirement plan when compared to others within the Department of Energy complex. It is our understanding that many retirees have now lost over 50 percent of the value of their pension benefits and are seeking an equitable adjustment. In particular, the retirees are requesting: (a) pension adjustments for all retirees that restore 75 percent of buying power lost due to inflation, (b) the same 2 percent flat-rate spousal option offered to employees retiring after June 2004 and (c) that the DOE contractors regularly review and adjust pension values for all retirees in the future in order to prevent a recurrence of the present situation. These are fair and reasonable requests that could be funded by the assets of the Pension Trust Fund.

"Our concern is for the welfare of the nearly 12,000 retirees from DOE contractors living in East Tennessee, particularly the 5,350 constituents who reside in the two counties of Anderson and Roane."

Frank Munger's blog, which you can access from this blog, has an interesting table showing the number of living ORNL retirees - by the year in which they retired. The title is More retiree numbers.

The total today is 3072.

Just thought some of you might be interested.

The Editor

Keith Kibbe writes: 

Retirees have for a number of years enjoyed the support of Congressman Wamp.  In fact, Congressman Wamp has stated recently that he anticipates that his seniority and influence will increase in the House of Representatives for the next Congress and that he intends to openly confront DOE about the need  for pension adjustments  for Oak Ridge retirees.   Fortunately, over the last year CORRE has succeeded in also obtaining the support of Senator Alexander.   In various of his Town Hall meetings last October, Senator Alexander openly stated that he is on our side but he also pointed out that it is a difficult problem to solve because people on the other side of the issue tell him that they do not agree with CORRE "on the numbers".   They claim the pension adjustments would weaken the retirement fund.  CORRE knows this is not the case.    Senator Alexander and his staff are currently taking a close look into the situation, seeking ways to make the adjustments happen.   CORRE, for its part, is assisting by clarifying and simplifying the math associated with the adjustments being sought.  CORRE is providing the Senator, and the local Contractor officials, a simplified table that will show the % pension increase CORRE is seeking for each year of retirement.  The longer a person has been retired, the more the inflation losses have been and therefor the larger the pension increase would be.    These % increases correspond to CORRE's long standing request that  each retiree receiving a pension increase that would recover about 75% of inflationary looses since the year of retirement.   The CORRE Board knows that this table will permit a straightforward calculation to be made which will show that the retirement fund can "afford" the requested pension adjustments.   Progress is slowly being made by CORRE on pension adjustments, but it is a difficult process.  If it were easy it would have been accomplished long ago.

DOE has given UT-Battelle straight A's on it performance as manager of ORNL.  See Frank Munger's article on the DOE evaluation.  As retirees, we are all, of course, appreciative of the job they have done to keep ORNL a top notch lab.  However, on some things, the management of UT-Battelle does not have such stellar performance.  They do not measure up to what Union Carbide did to keep retirees protected to some degree from inflation.

What score would you give them on looking out for retirees?

In a post on Frank Munger's blog, Robert Henderson, an Oak Ridge contractor retiree, said he believes that DOE's strategy regarding a pension increase is to delay, deny, and hope they die. Indeed! Read the whole thing and the comments on Munger's Atomic City Underground.

Here is the link to the post.

Judy Kidd provided the following note. 

I was reading this morning's paper, and I came across this little
aside in Frank Munger's column. He is writing about Zach Wamp's
increasing influence in Congress and about his work on the energy and 
water subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. What 
caught my eye was this final paragraph:
 
"Side Note: Wamp made it clear that, if he becomes the energy and 
water subcommittee's Republican leader, he plans to exert direct 
pressure on the energy secretary to free up a pension increase for 
Oak Ridge retirees."

Bob Henderson writes:

"Joe" had attended evening school and worked as an accountant. He was recruited in 1942 to come do important work "for the government" in Oak Ridge. With pride he served his country supporting the secret work here. His family moved to Knoxville until rental housing became available in Oak Ridge in 1945. When Oak Ridgers were allowed to buy their government-owned-houses in 1957 he bought the home they had rented for twelve years. By 1971-72 health problems forced him to retire shortly before he was sixty-five.

Joe was a professional who worked in Oak Ridge for 30 years. Salaries weren't very high in Oak Ridge when he retired in the early 70's, but he was confident his government would reward his loyalty with a livable pension for him and his wife for as long as they lived. Joe died in 1989 at age 81. His widow receives a surviving spouse pension check and she remains in the house where she has now lived for over sixty two years.

Her pension check in 2005 was $395 each month and $187 of that was withheld to provide health coverage. She received a net of $209 each month from the pension. That and her social security check are how she survives. She provides minimal upkeep on the house, keeps the lights and heat as low as she can stand and doesn't pay anyone to come to clean because she can't afford it. She fell in the Fall of 2006 and broke her hip. After time in the hospital and in rehab, she returned to her home to live alone.

As a ninety-three year old, she wouldn't complain because she grew up during the depression. She loves Oak Ridge, her USA, and the University of Tennessee. She taught school for a number of years when she was younger. Is this how we say, "Thanks for a job well done for DOE contractor retirees and their spouses in Oak Ridge?

In December of 2007, now 94 years old, she fell again at her home and couldn't reach the telephone to call for help. She lay on the floor for two days before someone came and found her. I visited her in early January, 2008 at a health care center. She hopes to be able to return home soon. One of her most pressing concerns is the high cost of care outside her home. How long will she be able to hold on hoping for a pension adjustment that can make her last days more tolerable, at least financially? Should I suggest that she be patient? Should we wait patiently for change?