We Need Your Help!

SOAR has never been more important to our retirees and to our union. Working families and retirees are under unprecedented assault. Corporations are using the

excuse of the global economy to gut our contracts and abandon their obligations

to their retirees. Congress is attempting to balance our nation’s budget on the

back of the working class, while cutting the taxes of corporations and wealthy

Americans.

The only way to defend ourselves is by organizing our retirees and partnering

with our union’s active members to confront the issues that jeopardize our economic security and way of life. This is where we need your help. In order to maximize our impact, SOAR needs to grow. We need you to reach out to your fellow retirees and other likeminded retirees to recruit them into our organization.

Our union has fought hard for our retirees. In many cases, when the employer abandoned them through shutdowns and bankruptcies, our union was there. The USW established a number of VEBAs (Voluntary Employee Benefit Trusts) that help restore many of the benefits that were lost. I am amazed at how few of the beneficiaries of our VEBAs belong to SOAR. This is an area that we need to concentrate our organizing efforts. If your Chapter or retirees in your area are enrolled in a VEBA, I am asking you to reach out to them and remind

them that the union provided this benefit and we need their help.

But VEBA participants cannot be our sole focus. All retirees are under constant attack. The only way to stop these attacks is to organize, agitate and educate. SOAR provides the vehicle to get it done!

Let’s get to work!

Connie Entrekin, SOAR President