RE: Raising the Retirement Age

[National Dialogue Moderator <moderator>]

	For us, the discussion about whether to raise the retirement
ages begins and ends with one definitive question:  Is it fair to cut
Social Security's guaranteed retirement benefits in a manner that has
the harshest impact on workers least able to absorb the loss or to
continue working?  Raising the retirement age will have precisely that
effect. 

	There is no mistaking an increase in the retirement age for
anything other than a benefit cut, and a substantial one at that.  The
most frequently discussed increase--pushing the age for collecting full
retirement benefits back to 70 and older--means reduced lifetime
benefits for all beneficiaries and lower monthly amounts for those who
begin to receive benefits before attaining the new, higher retirement
age.  An increase in the earliest age at which workers and dependents
can collect any benefits puts the hardest squeeze on those whose
personal circumstances compel them to retire.
	
	Common sense tells us that people who spend their work lives
scrubbing floors in a nursing home, moving 5 liter engine blocks around
a factory floor, pouring steel into a Bessemer mill, or hauling bricks
around a construction site can count on a shorter work life simply
because their bodies wear out sooner than those of us in this room who
spend our work days behind desks.  Blue collar workers are simply more
likely to experience work-place injuries and to suffer impaired physical
capacity that precludes working very far into their 60's.  

	Raising retirement ages will confront workers like these with a
difficult choice: more years of employment that only further undermine
their already fragile health; or sharply reduced benefits, making it all
the more likely that poverty is their payback for a lifetime of hard
work.  

	Clearly, the blue collar worker category does not define the
boundary of Americans who would be hit hard by a retirement age
increase.  Anyone who faces above-average risks of dying relatively
early or being forced out of the labor force by a work disability is
likely to feel the pain of a retirement age increase.  Unfortunately,
the same Americans who typically lack substantial alternative retirement
resources beyond Social Security--the poor and African Americans--also
face the greatest probability that they will die or be forced out of the
work force before they reach a new, higher retirement age.  

	Whether or not to raise the retirement age is one discussion in
which there is a clear disconnect between the political dialogue in
Washington and the values of working Americans.  Public opinion research
and our own experiences with union members have made it very clear that
the public does not support an increase in the retirement ages.  

Gerry Shea
AFL-CIO