Seniors Catch Up

Retirees assemble at Local 848 at 11AM every 2nd Thursday. At our July meeting, we caught up on union news, political developments affecting seniors, and some of the candidates running for office in Texas.

The big news around Local 848 is the ongoing election. Retirees will be able to vote on a new Trustee, but not on any candidates in the grievance procedure. There are details on this web site.

The new contract for the Machinists Union at Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth was interesting because they may be setting trends for aerospace workers everywhere. Details of union contracts are not usually published, but news coverage indicated that mandatory overtime and raises to cover inflation were issues that the union settled successfully over 3 months of negotiations. The Fort Worth Report article was repeated in the Dallas Morning News:https://eedition.dallasnews.com/app/DAMONE/editionguid/64923bea-9dbc-4d8e-81ef-4eeb35b2085b.

For those of us not directly involved, the most important thing is whether or not the membership of the union voted to ratify, and they did.

Just in case anybody wants to attend by long distance, our union retirees offer easy on-line participation. In July, Holly Taylor appeared on the union's TV. She is a labor-endorsed candidate for the Texas Court of Civil Appeals, a statewide office. Just the day before, she had also been endorsed by the Texas Alliance for Retired Americans. Her campaign worker, Hunter Griffin, is pictured watching her presentation.

Another union-endorsed candidate, Diana Loya, is running for State Representative in District 87, way up on the Texas Panhandle. Our on-line participation is not restricted by great distances, so she was able to participate directly in our meeting.  She is seeking support from Texas retirees. We made a recording of her so that other retirees could make their choice.

We don't just gather to eat the fried chicken that our Retired Worker Fund pays for, we also have an exciting rundown on new political developments. Vice President Al Herrera keeps up with developments and always has a strong report. A lot of the news nowadays is far from good. A new Social Security committee in the Republican Congress is sure to recommend the same things they always do: cutting benefits, dividing retirees, and raising the retirement age. The Alliance for Retired Americans has a simple solution to the Social Security shortfall: let rich people pay Social Security taxes all year the way we do.

Medicare is under assault by a pilot program implemented in Texas and five other states. They call it "WISeR," but we called it "DUMMeR." Several Senators are trying to kill the program because they realize that it's sole point is to undermine Medicare. Medicaid, which mostly affects the very young and the very old, has already been savagely ripped.

Seniors are the best voters in America. We'll be turning out strongly in November. Meantime, we'll keep meeting on 2nd Thursdays to strengthen our cause.