A second look at pension issues

A second look at pension issues

Recent letters and articles are a continuation of The Vindicator’s efforts to tell the story of the plight of Delphi salaried retirees. It seems to me that there are really two issues that need to be addressed, one being the pensions of those who retired at the normally accepted retirement age of the mid-60s, the other being the pensions of early retirees.

One cannot help but sympathize with those 65 years old and older whose pensions have been reduced by up to 30 percent only because of their bad luck to work for a company that went bankrupt. While a sense of fairness would suggest that full pensions be restored for these retirees, what of the nearly 750,000 other retirees of bankrupt companies, many of whom receive reduced pensions from the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation? Isn’t their plight the same? Doesn’t that same sense of fairness ask how financial assistance can be offered to one group but denied others?

In almost every article about this Delphi pension issue, mention is made that some have had pension checks slashed up to 70 percent. What is not mentioned is that age of the retiree is the determining factor used by the PBGC in setting the level of a retiree’s pension. A 70 percent reduction applies almost exclusively to those in their early- to mid-50s. It is difficult to enlist much sympathy for the plight these retirees from the vast majority of taxpayers who must work some 10 to 15 years longer to retire with full pension benefits. The proper governmental response to their plight would seem to be to consider them unemployed and eligible for full unemployment benefits as well as subsidies of COBRA health care costs.

Retirement while still in the early 50s is, unfortunately, still the purview of only the very rich. As much as we would like it to be, retirement for the average worker at 50 or 55 years of age is not sustainable in our economy. Competing in the world economy certainly precludes corporations from paying good, experienced workers who are still in their productive work years to stay at home. Social Security is going broke because the benefits paid to an increasing number of retirees, living increasingly longer lives, are funded by a decreasing number of workers. To maintain the solvency of Social Security it is inevitable that the retirement age be raised, not lowered; the only question is how high.

We need to begin a dialog that addresses the issues of individual, corporate and governmental responsibilities. These should include a establishing a universally recognized retirement age (adjusted for average life expectancy), reviewing the methods used by corporations to fund employee pensions, governmental oversight of those pension plans and a health care plan that provides at least a basic level of care for all Americans, especially those who have lost their jobs.

Robert F. Mollic, Liberty Township