Published: August 02, 2009 09:49 pm      

Letters - Monday, Aug. 3, 2009

Pension earners, you will be next

I am a Delco retired person. I refuse to call it Delphi to this day.

After 33 years of hard work, those people in Troy, Mich., have decided to destroy more families and communities with their disgraceful treatment of the same people who, over the years, gave them some of the greatest profits any company could ever expect to get.

As I remember, both sides sat at the table and agreed to a contract. They want us to work hard, make a valuable product with quality and salability at a low cost. Those things we, the workers, did.

In return, they agreed to good wages, working conditions and a retirement plan. Now they want to throw all of their promises out the window. What is wrong with this picture?

The company cries wolf because of bad management skills and producing products that the people did not want anymore. Their slowness to adjust to customer wants is not the fault of the workers.

During times of great profits they were supposed to fund their retirement obligations. They didn’t. They failed to live up to their end of the bargain. Thousands and thousands of families will now pay the price – a price that should never have happened.

At one time America was the finest country on earth to work in. We won WWII because of our people’s ability to produce. Not anymore! It’s a shame.

We retirees need to stick together. We need to use legal means to force these companies to live up to their end of the bargain.

Like the title says, you will be next, Ford, Chrysler and other companies.

Just by having the Bomb doesn’t make a country strong. It’s the workers that do.

Larry Graves

Kokomo

Medicare requires reasonable rates

All reports say that Medicare is going broke! Why? Let me give you an example we recently experienced.

My husband received a phone call regarding a piece of equipment he uses. He was asked, “Is it working all right?” His answer was yes, and the phone call was discontinued – a local call. Next month we received a bill for $20, stating that Medicare had paid the balance, of $180. He called and asked why he was billed $200 for a one-minute phone call. The answer was, “That is what Medicare established.”

To me that is fraud. If reasonable rates were established, perhaps there could be more years of Medicare activity, but $200 for a local phone call?

Marjorie Johnson

Kokomo