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.
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."
