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Good and hard

Date Posted: November 26 2004

If you weren't a little alarmed about our front-page report regarding employers suing innocent retirees in an effort to convince a judge to cancel the retirees' health benefits, you should be.

These are retirees who are otherwise minding their own business. Then they get a knock at the door from a process server who gives them papers and tells them they're being sued.

Not that the retirees did anything wrong. They only had the misfortune of working for a company that wants to get out from under the heavy weight of health care benefits that they have contractually provided to retirees - in some cases, for many decades.

There's little doubt that paid health care benefits for both American workers and retirees and is declining. Prescription co-pays are up. Few are the Americans who aren't paying more for doctor visits and surgical procedures. Health care charges are astronomical, and there's a national debate going on about how to reign in costs.

None of that is news. But the fact that a company would go to the trouble of filing a lawsuit in order to stop paying for benefits that it has historically provided retirees should scare the hell out of all of us. Will pension benefits be the next target?

In the wake of the scandals at Enron and other large corporations, and as we get used to the outsourcing of perfectly good U.S. jobs in the corporate pursuit of higher profits, will American workers stand by and let companies aggressively take away what little remains that separates our workers from those in the Third World?

Probably.

Here's why: few people know about the records of the judges they vote for, and fewer consider the fact that presidents and governors appoint judges to federal benches who reflect their own philosophies.

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, the companies who are suing workers aren't stupid - the companies go "court shopping" and take their cases before judges who historically make corporate-friendly judgements. And some of the rulings have gone in favor of the companies.

These are the same type of conservative judges who have nearly completely taken away an injured workers' ability to win a workers compensation lawsuit in Michigan, and who ruled that Michigan's prevailing wage law was illegal (his ruling was later overturned).

And who puts those corporate-friendly judges on the bench? Republican governors, Republican presidents, and ultimately, the American voter.

Americans who don't look at the whole picture when they vote for candidates should consider a quote from H. L. Mencken: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."