CORRE Blog

 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.

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.

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.

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

Most of you know of Frank Munger, Senior Writer for the News Sentinel. Hopefully you also know he has been a supporter of CORRE and its activities. For example, Frank gave excellent coverage to CORRE's most recent annual meeting.

Frank now has a blog of his own, called Munger's Blog. You can access it by clicking on Munger's Blog under Blogroll on the right side of this page. So take a moment and see what is hapening with that Blog.You might even see something that you want to comment.

The Editor

A CORRE member saw this article and passed it along. 

An interesting article in the Washington Post on the COLAs for federal employees, the people who prevent a COLA for us.  The article is at:

            http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/17/AR2007 101702266.html?hpid=sec-business

To read it, you will have to register, but there is no cost.

In a letter to the Knoxville News Sentinel, Sara Jordon, a retiree from BWXT had this to say:

"Clearly our senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, and Reps. John J. Duncan Jr. and Zach Wamp do not care about this group of 12,000 retirees who spent their careers in Oak Ridge serving national causes and are now forgotten.Unlike their counterparts in New Mexico and California for other Department of Energy facilities, the guys in Washington have ignored many letters from us, the members of the Coalition of Oak Ridge Retired Employees (Google "CORRE")."

Read her whole letter on Retirees Seeking to Improve their Pension Benefits.

Members might be interested in checking out articles on the CORRE annual meeting held September 26.  Here are the links:

Frank Munger in the Knoxville News Sentinel

Dave Reichle, President of CORRE, interview (video)

Beverly Majors in the Oak Ridger

The issue of low contractor pensions for retirees of Oak Ridge contractors is the subject of an article in the Oak Ridger.  The Oak Ridger also had three letters yesterday on the subject of pensions. The issue needs more coverage in the local media.  This is a good sign.