Alexander & Wamp Are Trying to Help
Thursday, February 14th, 2008Keith 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.
