Oh, come on flap....we all know we have had a 40 year Democratic majority in Congress, until 1994....As for Ms. Skinner, and the company she worked for, and the UAW, which she belonged to....we shall see in the media this week, some of those answers...how long she worked, for whom, how much she paid each month for union dues, etc etc etc. Maybe Al Gores folk's will have an answer by then...
My own parents both had (yes HAD is the operative word, if they wanted to work) to belong to unions (to my dismay)...they were sure the unions would help them in retirement. One parent belonged and paid dues to "his" union from 1954 until he was 69...(25 years)....and received the grand total of $50 a month before he died a few years ago. When he died, his spouse received less than five hundred dollars for 'death allowance', and no (NO) funds after that. The other parent belonged to "her" union for 20 years, retired at $6.79/hr (not bad for a non-college wage back in 1979 (just 21 years ago!)...and gets less than $20.00 from her union......
They both saw the start of the FDR program, including Social Security. They both went through the depression, WWII, raised a family with no government assistance, paid their bills, went from a rural life to the big city so as to provide a better opportunity for their children.
They are just examples of all the "working class families" (which by the way, was nearly the entire nation in those years...)
It would be interesting to see which unions (any??) tell their members exactly what their pension will be after so many years, and if it keeps up with the cost of living or not? |
