A pre-convention conference hosted by the AFT Committee on Retirement featured an array of speakers and workshops on topics such as politics, healthcare, member benefits and recruiting new retiree leaders. Entitled "Evening the Odds," the seventh annual conference drew nearly 300 participants.

"We must bring a message to new retirees and members who are in service: It pays to have a union," AFT secretary-treasurer Edward J. McElroy told the conference's opening session.

Pointing to the challenges faced by the union's divisions, such as vouchers, the cost of healthcare and budget cuts, McElroy urged retirees to continue their political activism. "Part of the solution is political work," he said. The union must build on what retirees have done and elect people who can help us, he added.

The AFT retiree sector has experienced phenomenal growth in the past decade, AFT vice president and AFT retirement committee co-chair Walter Dunn noted. There were 32,500 retired members in 1990; today there are more than 173,000. And with more than 250,000 members expected to retire in the next decade, it's critical that we do not lose the people who helped to build the union, said Dunn, who stressed the need for more input from retired members.

Delegates to the AFT convention adopted three retirement-related resolutions designed to protect pensions, support efforts to expand prescription drug coverage to Medicare and oppose privatization of Social Security. A resolution on "Protecting Workers' Retirement Security and Preventing Future Enrons" deals with the growing number of corporate accounting scandals and the damage those scandals have inflicted on workers' pensions. It argues that "only firm and purposeful government intervention and regulation" can prevent similar corporate scandals.

Prescription drugs: A top priority

Unless something is done to control escalating healthcare costs, "your children and grandchildren might not have healthcare benefits," Bill Cunningham, a staffer in the AFT department of legislation, told a retirement conference workshop.

Rising costs have put employer-based healthcare benefits in serious jeopardy, warned Cunningham, adding that it's critical that Medicare have a prescription drug benefit program. "It's widely known that prescription drugs are one of the main factors driving up healthcare costs."

U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), co-sponsor of legislation that would add a prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program, sent a videotaped message to members. The time has come, she said, for a "comprehensive, affordable, and guaranteed prescription drug benefit."

Edward Coyle, executive director of the AFL-CIO's Alliance for Retired Americans, noted that this autumn much of the work the 2.7 million-member advocacy organization will center on is prescription drugs. The alliance also has identified a number of Senate and House races it plans to focus on.