renovation

Health care for salaried retirees over 65 will be eliminated, effective Jan. 1, while affected retirees will receive a pension increase to offset Medicare costs.
they will give them a extra $300 a month in cash thats taxable income . but remove there medical bennies .
ok for me and the wife our medical coverage is history when she retires from the hospital where she works now as a nurse. and i'm sure most members here have to pay for our own heath insurance when they retire. but to have it for free and then after you plan your retirement and retire . only to find you need to go out and start paying for it on the budget you have planned for years. this can be a nightmare for them. i'm sure some will not even could be placed with insurance company's due to aliments they have now. i have to feel for these people they are totally screwed.
i feel most auto workers that work for the big 3 are over payed .but still to have this pulled from them at retirement is a major kick in the A$$.
and i'm worried more people will be put in this same boat if its allowed to happen.
as company's will follow one by one pulling heath coverage from their former workers. you work 25 plus years for a company plan to retire lets say or do retire. only to find out you cant because all your retirement funds now need to go to heath insurance payments. that for 30 years you had to worry about. because that company you stayed with for all those years offer it, and then in the final mins to you packing up your locker for your final day .they come to you and say enjoy your free time .but from today forward were not giving you a benny we said we would. and it was a major reason you stayed with that company.and why you were able to retire now. but you can't return to that job because your to old or your jobs been filled or zap. and there are no jobs out there for a old goat like you. if i was a GM worker ready to retire or one retired i'd be so pissed right now.
and if your company offers medical after you retire i'd be really wondering if they wont do as GM has

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guiseppewv

I feel for you. I do not count on anything for retirement that I do not have direct and final say on. I count on my IRAs, 401k, and stock account. The rest is all icing on the cake if they come through. I know it is different once you retire you get used to having certain benefits and to have them taken away is terrible. I have had many relatives who lost their retirement or had it severely minimized due to a poor performing company. The steel mills did all this same crap in the 80s and 90s. I for one, am glad that the govt setup laws to allow us to have control over our own destiny (e.g. IRA, Roth IRA, 401k, etc...).

DarkFury

My next door neighbor is a former GM employee (actually he worked for a subsidary company that made transmissions for GM vehicles) and he was telling me about how this has affected him.

He ended up getting a part time job driving a school bus for a local college...

Being retired and having to go back to work would suck major balls... unfortunately us "young folks" probably will never get to retire as everything we contribute to from a "gubment standpoint" probably will be dried up by the time we qualify for it.

And with the economy in the state it is in, my 401K plan and my child's college fund account is taking a major butt beating as of late.

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guiseppewv

I have to agree with the sound of the toilet flushing when I see the SS deducted from my paychecks. The current retirees can thank us for what they receive.

My 401k isn't doing too bad besides I don't keep track of it too closely. I look at it as buying stock on sale right now. Within the next year or so the market will have corrected itself and the beating everyone's accounts are taking now will be long forgotten. It is only the people retiring soon that have to worry.

Jeffbx

That DOES suck big time for retirees, and I'm sure that some people will be having to re-join the worplace just to make ends meet now - especially those on expensive prescriptions.

They can all thank the unions for this - all the years of unfettered & unrealistic benefits have finally caught up. Maybe now they'll realize that there is not some big unlimited pool of cash that they can draw on for insane benefits, like lifeling healthcare after 5 years of employment.

zippyjuan

I don't completely agree with you Jeff. Unions also helped people to get those health benifits in the first place. Without them, a significantly higher number of people would be uninsured. Like any group of people some unions have done bad things and some have done good things. It is a question of how much the union is willing to work with the company to help insure that it survives and that the jobs are preserved- not by pricing themselves out of a job. Yes, there are unions which have done that. There are also some who have taken pay and benefit cuts to keep people working.

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guiseppewv

I do agree with Jeff. They priced themselves out of the market. They are people who are not educated (don't read this as unskilled) and/or trained on the job or through their company and they are making 6 figures. They (the auto industry) had people sweeping floors making $25+/hr. (They have done away with this in the past year or two.) The union definitely priced them out of a job. That being said, I still feel bad for everyone who lost their insurance. The fat cat union leaders, I bet, did not lose theirs!

Jeffbx

Don't get me wrong - unions certainly had their place at one time, and still do even today in some places (teachers, healthcare). But larger unions (especially the UAW) kept pushing & pushing for more & more unrealistic benefits - unlimited healthcare for life, guaranteed jobs regardless of performance, pay levels twice as high as non-union, etc. It finally caught up to them because the big 3 can no longer afford to keep up, and now the workers that were promised all of this are losing out.

If they had kept benefits & salary at the same levels (or even SLIGHTLY higher) than non-union, the entire automotive industry wouldn't be in the toilet today. It would still be rough, that's for sure, but the cuts wouldn't be nearly as severe.

nate el bueno

Well, from what I understand (learned in a geography class, ironically) the system was established because after you retired at age 55 or so, you were expected to die in a few years. Since life expectancy has risen so much in the last half-decade, companies are finding that they actually can't support their former employees because it's not for 2 years- it's for 20 or more. I suppose the choice is between long life and no benefits, or a short but beautiful 3 years of retirement

munkeybrains

hell, that's bad news for people who don't get explicitly covered procedures on their health plans arbitrarily declined right now, today. it took me a year and a half to go through the appeals for neck surgery that was covered. eight different doctors in different fields saying the same thing -- it's medically necessary. me being on disability because i can't sit up. some bean counter doing an eenie-meenie-miney-mo. the "internal advocate" at the health insurance company saying WTF is up with this, it's in writing that this is coverd. when it went to outside third party review, i had a phone call 20 minutes later saying it was approved. 20K in doctors costs (paid for by the insurance company), nearly a year of disability income, paid for by the insurance company, all my coworkers picking up slack, just to decline a 4K procedure that would have had me in the hospital overnight and out of work for about 3 weeks. now permanent nerve damage.

i'm like, can i move somewhere less dehumanizing than corporate amuhr-ka? like canada? or china? or afghanistan?


but all above have valid viewpoints. if it weren't for unions we would have never had benefits to begin with, so a little is better than nothing i suppose. perhaps i will be lucky enough to not see what post america multinational corporate america will be like for retirees. that, or i'll be sure to do my part to make that batch of soylent taste friggin nasty.

guiseppewv

First, welcome to the board. I am really sorry that you have nerve damage that most likely could have been prevented with surgery early on. It sucks to be dealt a raw deal.


Second, if you think any of those places are better then hit the road, jack. To actually compare what goes on here to China or Afghanistan - are you smoking something?


I do agree at one point unions did serve a purpose. Now they are just added overhead for workers. They are like a leech sucking blood from the ones that actually do the work. For the most part they only make it easier for workers to slack off and get away with breaking the rules.