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?
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 CORRE Board met today. Paula Wright, CORRE Treasurer, reported that 62 retired employees became active CORRE members in November and 22 more have joined as of December 18. The total active membership is now almost 3100.
If you know of a retiree who is not an active member, ask him or her to join. It is important that we have as many active members as possible.
The Editor
Growing up, I thought Spam was a food. Now I know it is also E-mail garbage.
I get between 75 and 100 spam E-mails a day. Our spam blocker, Barracuda, shows the message title beginning with SPAM so I don't read the content, just punch Delete. I have seen enough titles to know that they generally contain one or more key words in three groups:
1. Mental, physical, or sexual
2. Stronger, longer, bigger, or prolonged
3. Cheap, amazing, or guaranteed
You can pick one word from each group and use your imagination as to the type of garbage I'm getting!!
Why am I telling this to you? Well, this morning I deleted an E-mail I had forwarded from my personal E-mail account because Barracuda identified it as SPAM - even though the title of my message didn't contain any of the key words above. I caught it, and pulled it out of the DELETE files, because I remembered I had sent an E-mail to the CORRE account.
But I don't want to inadvertantly delete one from you. So when you send me a message, please don't use any of the key words and instead put CORRE, BJC, DOE, Pension or something similar in the title.
Thanks,
Dave
Well Folks, I haven't heard from anyone in at least a week - not even a comment on a posting. Are you losing interest? Is there nothing worthwhile being posted? Should we be talking about something different?
Let me know
The Editor
Earlier this week, I asked you to send in your comments, opinion, question, etc. I haven't heard from anyone.
Now I'm just asking that you send me an E-mail (davemason@corre.info) to let me know you've seen the message. You don't have to say anything. Right now, we are not even sure anyone is looking at the blog-and it is your blog.
If you want to say something, you could say whether this blog is of any value to you. You could say whether you look at it frequently or infrequently.
I won't identify you on the blog unless you want to be identified.
So please, let me know that you' ve seen the blog - even if only one time.
Thanks,
The Editor
Fellow retirees:
We need to hear from you. What are your concerns, questions, or issues?
Your use of, and contribution to, this blog helps our cause.
If you have anything to ask or say, all you have to do is send me an E-mail at davemason@corre.info. That is pretty simple.
On the other hand, if you want to make a comment on something that has been posted, you can do that directly if you don't want to send me an E-mail. You can go to the column on the right of the blog page and look for the section Pages. Under that look for How to Comment, click on it and follow the directions.
Whatever you decide, just decide to use this blog by letting me hear from you.
Dave Mason, Editor
President Dave and I met with Rick Morrow, Executive Director of the Anderson County United Way recently. The purpose of the meeting was twofold. First, for Rick to explain a new mission of the United Way of Anderson County. Second, to see whether there is any synergy between CORRE's mission and that of the United Way. While it is for the CORRE Board to determine whether there is a synergy, I felt you would be interested in the United Way mission, called Aging with Honor in Anderson County.
Did you know that nearly 22% of Oak Ridgers and 17% of all of Anderson County residents are 65 years of age or older? The national and state average is about 12%. Aging with Honor in Anderson County is a county-wide, citizen-driven, multi-year approach to developing and implementing programs and services for seniors and their caregivers. Six work groups have been formed to address the following:
1. Senior Nutrition Today approximately 130 seniors recieve a hot meal each day but another 165 need hot meals.
2. Housing and Utilities This group is looking into questions and solutions for seniors' home repair, housing and utility support.
3. Adult Safety Nearly half of Anderson County seniors have no local family. This coalition has been workng for three years already to find solutions to help seniors avoid being victimized by fradulent E-mails, sales people and other schemes targeting them.
4. Health and Home Services Almost 47% of local seniors have at least one disability and need services brought to them.
5. Caregiver Support Caregivers too often find themselves over-whelmed, isolated and burdened, and lack the resources to support their senior as they would like. This group is examing the issues and seeking resources to help these caregivers.
6. Community Education and Awareness As a community, we all too often see seniors as a burden rather than a resource. This group will examine ways to bring seniors' issues and needs to the top of mind awareness.
If you would like more information or if you believe you can be part of the United Way effort, please contact
Rick Morrow, UWAC Executive Director
483-8431 or uwayac@bellsouth.net
And, if you don't live in Anderson County and you think such a mission is needed where you live, contact Rick for information.
More retirees are sending questions and comments for posting on the CORRE blog. Inputs written using MS Word are most difficult to post unless I completely retype them.
WordPress, the platform we are using for this blog, is one of the most popular. But, it's formatting is just not compatible with Word. An example is a recent posting entitled Estimated Cost of CORRE Proposals for Pension Improvements. While it contains good information, it is difficult to read.
So, if you will be so kind to put your inputs on Notepad and E-mail to me, I can most easily convert them to a post.
Also, when you send me something, please let me know from whom you retired-BWXT, etc.
Thanks,
Editor
CORRE has installed a blog for use by the CORRE membership and the Board. The subject of the blog is:
Blogs are very useful for communications by the Board and officers to the membership and vice versa but they are more important as a method of mass communication between members themselves. Not only does a blog provide for the expression of concerns on the blog topic, provide a sense of community but, more importantly, members can suggest new approaches to the solution of the problems the membership faces. Lastly, they produce a stream of members' comments which can be directed to those instrumental to any changes required.
However blogs are only as effective as the participation in them: CORRE members must use the blog and freely (but politely) express concerns and ideas. You cannot expect others to do it for you. Each of you must stand and be counted. The task we face is political and not easy; it will be slow. Please blog now and often. The blog is at: http://blogcorre.info/ and questions may be directed to: DaveMason@corre.info
Dave Mason, CORRE Blog Editor
President Reichle reports that ~500 retirees attended the annual meeting. Ten retirees joined CORRE at the meeting. Also, $170 was contributed by members who said they wanted to help as much as possible.
-Editor
Buddy Holley asked:
How many living retirees are there and what is the average age?
Joe Setaro provided the following information in response:
According to our latest information from the Company (ORNL/BWXT) the
total number of retirees is 11,025. This does not include retirees
of BJC and Wackenhut, but these are few.
We do not have the average age of retirees. We do, however, have the
number of retirees by year of retirement. The median year of
retirement is 1995 (5,696 current retirees/surviving spouses retired
from the beginning of 1995 through the end of 2006).
The CORRE Blog is a welcome adjunct to the CORRE website; and I urge the CORRE membership to use it frequently, as its use will be a measure of the support for CORRE and its efforts on behalf of members and other retirees.
The Brooks/Henderson website with its crude blog does not wish to compete with CORRE. Therefore, the CORRE blog and website should be the publishing route of choice. However, the B/H site and blog will remain open to accommodate any submissions that do not meet the CORRE guidelines. The CORRE member E-mail list (~700) will also be available.
Again, I urge the members to make the CORRE blog a success by using it freely.
Al Brooks
Welcome to the CORRE blog.
The Coalition of Oak Ridge Retired Employees (CORRE) has established this blog for you - a employee retired from the Y-12 Plant, ORNL, the former K-25 site, Wackenhut, or Bechtel Jacobs. If you are a surviving spouse of a retired Oak Ridge employee or an interested family member, this blog is for you. I think also that current employees of one of the Oak Ridge sites will be interested as they will someday be retired and eligible for the retirement benefits. This blog is intended to allow you the opportunity to stay abreast of the CORRE activities related to your retirement benefits. In addition, it provides a forum for you to ask questions, share opinions, and make comments.
The CORRE Board of Directors has authorized this blog and has tasked me to be its editor. The Board wants you to know what it is doing on your behalf and the Board needs your input to be sure it is working in the right direction.
To help you stay abreast, we will post topics of interest approximately every other week on Friday. We have enlisted several contributors who will write short articles on special topics.
The Board and other retirees would like to hear from you about:
-Your experiences with the the decrease in value of your pension
-Any experience with corespondence with officials about Oak Ridge experiences
-Your experience with medical cost
-Summaries of, and references to, articles about retirement benefits, the cost of living for retirees, and ideas on how to manage on retirement income
If you have information, comments, or opinions that you want to share, just send them to me at davemason@corre.info. I will review them and post them as soon as possible. If I think it may not be appropriate for posting, I wll inform you in a return E-mail.
If you have a question, just E-mail it to me; if I cannot answer the question, I will find someone who can answer and post the answer.
As we start this blog, I have only one rule for you -you must identify yourself to me in your E-mail. However, if you tell me in your E-mail, I will not identify you when I post your submittal.
You can of course comment at any time on any of the posts in this blog.
So please use this blog to keep yourself informed and also to let other retirees know how you feel.
Dave Mason, Editor
