National Nurses United

RAD_Nov 12/9/10 10:39 PM Page 11 Rose Ann DeMoro Executive Director, National Nurses United Working Over Time A Wall Street and Beltway insiders want to change Social Security so that nurses and other Americans will have to work until age 69 for far fewer benefits. Why we must fight back. chill wind is blowing from Washington. The message that some inside the Beltway are embracing is that they have a mandate to escalate the transfer of resources from nurses and other working people to those who least need it, the Wall Street speculators, corporate titans, and the most wealthy among us. A first shot came from the report of the president's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform which, fortunately, failed in early December to secure the votes it needed to move to Congress. But with Wall Street still salivating at the prospect of full or partial privatization of pension plans, and the misguided deficit hawks in Washington still eyeing cuts in Social Security, the threat remains very real, and we must continue to speak out. Proponents of the commission plan, Republicans and Democrats alike, called for raising the retirement age to 69 to qualify for benefits you've earned your entire working life, severely slashing retirement benefits by up to 35 percent for younger, middle-income workers, and reducing annual cost-of-living increases, along with other unwarranted cuts. No wonder some called it the "catfood commission" to memorialize the conditions they wanted to force upon far too many retirees. For RNs, predominantly non-union nurses, many who have labored with no or minimal employer-sponsored pension plans much of their adult lives, and many of whom now face escalating demands by management for reductions in their retirement programs, these recommendations are ominous indeed. Take Marie Barrentine, an operating room RN in Kansas City. Marie has concluded that she needs at least $3,000 a month in order to retire, but can only account for $2,000 a NOVEMBER 2010 month. That's why Marie is still working full time as a staff nurse in the OR at age 69. NNU Co-President Karen Higgins of Massachusetts, an RN who works in critical care, said she "cannot even fathom nurses at 69 still being required to work. Y need to ou have the highest mental and physical alertness to be able to provide safe care. The idea that nurses would be able to do that at 69 is dangerous to patients, but forcing us to be in a position that we would have to is disgraceful." Social Security, says retired Sacramento RN Elizabeth Pataki, "is vital. Many RNs retired early with back injuries and a long work history that involved great stresses on backs and joints, and simply have to retire early because they can no longer keep up with the pace of work that every year becomes physically more demanding." As a result, more nurses than ever, "cannot work to the usual age of retirement," says Pataki, with the effect that "pensions and savings are both lessened." The margin of economic protection is eroded, and "they may fall lower and lower in living standards and be struggling just to get by. Yet to require nurses to work longer can harm a nurse for the rest of her life. " There are many RNs like Marie and Elizabeth across the country, nurses who have good reason for concern about the security and dignity they can look forward to upon retirement after a lifetime of caring for others. They wonder why those in the insular world of Washington politics would be playing games with their future and seeking to "fix" a system that is not even broken. Speculators on Wall Street who hope to cash in on privatization of Social Security, along with those in the media and Congress who say cuts in Social Security are needed to reduce the budget deficit, have sadly misled the public. Social Security is not part of the federal budget; it was consciously set up by the Roosevelt administration during the New W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G Deal to be funded through payroll deductions. It would be hard to find a program that has been more successful, or popular. The year after Social Security was enacted, finally securing a degree of economic security and hope for millions in the midst of one of the deepest moments of despair in our nation's history, the president who promoted and signed the law, Franklin Roosevelt, was reelected in perhaps the biggest landslide in U.S. history. For 75 years, its opponents have had to resort to deception and distortions when seeking to erode this legacy. Even today, Social Security has a $2.6 trillion surplus, a figure expected to rise to $4.3 trillion within the next decade, and will remain in the black for at least the next 27 years. Whatever problems Social Security may face in the future, progressive economist Robert Kuttner recently wrote on Huffington Post, derive from "the fact that all the income gains have gone to the top ... If you want to get Social Security well into the black for the indefinite future, the easiest way is to restore wage growth." The priority in Washington ought to be creating good-paying jobs at living wages, such as expanding Medicare to cover everyone which, as NNU has documented, by itself would create at least 2.6 million new jobs, plus guarantee healthcare for everyone while curbing the still-escalating costs of healthcare. The fight to defend and protect Social Security is a battle for the security of all nurses and all working Americans – and the best message we can send to the incoming Congress and continuing administration in the White House for solutions is to expand the social safety net, not enrich those who need it the least. Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of National Nurses United. N AT I O N A L N U R S E 11

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