Xerox Retirees Trying to Keep Benefits

It is interesting how much the financial world and the corporate world have changed over the past few decades. You used to be able to work someplace, put in your time, retire, and count on the benefits that you paid in for and were promised.

That is not the way the world works any more. You put in your time and when someone absconds with the money or the financial picture changes for the company, you get a letter telling you that they are so sorry but your benefits are gone. The letter is typed by a secretary in the same situation that you are in, though she or he probably doesn’t know it yet. The letter is dictated by someone who will never be in that situation because of the millions he or she has made plus the perks and bonuses.

As a result, a group of retired Xerox Corporation employees plans to picket headquarters on Glover Avenue in Norwalk, CA to protest the elimination of the company’s “promised healthcare benefits.” That’s one way to repay loyalty and hard work. Maybe if the CEO and his or her board took a pay cut, the benefits could be paid for and stay in tact. This is not affecting a small group of people. It will affect 16,000 employees, half of them immediately.

David Conale, chairmain of the Association of Retired Xerox Employees states: “It means that every retiree over 65 — that is the last group of retirees who retired from 1995 on — they’re going to be losing somewhere between $1,400 and 1,700 a year that (Xerox) used to pay for a Medicare supplement.”

On Thursday morning, Coriale plans to bring a busload of about 30 retiree shareholders from the Rochester, N.Y., area. Another 20 or 30 retirees living in the Norwalk area will join them to picket outside the gate of the company headquarters at 45 Glover Ave. in advance of the annual shareholders’ meeting at 9 a.m., he said.

“We’re going to have a peaceful picket in front of the gated area,” Coriale said. “We’re going to be adjourning the picket line around 8:30 or 8:45, so all of us can go into the meeting.”

The Association of Retired Xerox Employees was formed in 2003 as a means to advocate for retired employees and their benefits. It has 2800 members throughout the U.S. making it the largest Xerox organization in the country. The association is also a shareholder in the company and attends annual shareholder meetings.

Management, of course, feels that even with the cuts to retirees, the retirement package “remains attractive and exceeds industry standards.” Nonetheless, it is not what the people who retired from Xerox were promised and with gains of $42 million for the first quarter (figures released last month), even though there were losses last year and measures put in place to save money – some at these retirees expense – there should be a few dollars in the coffers to keep from cheating seniors and retirees – usually the most vulnerable among us – from the benefits they worked hard for and count on to maintain their health and sometimes their life.