Proud member of the 15 PRESIDENT’S CLUB.
I remember my grandfather talking about Screwman Truman.
My grandfather had lost his eyesight as a young man of 27 in a mine explosion and he had a pension that Truman cancelled.
It wasn’t much money but it was something my grandfather felt he had earned.
“Proud member of the 15 PRESIDENT’S CLUB.”
Granny are you saying you were alive when Franklin D Roosevelt was alive? That would be 15 presidents back.
My father was a dyed in the wool Democrat and I swear when I lived in Seattle as a young child he took me to see Truman when he was campaigning. When I Google it though it says he made a whirlwind tour across Washington state from Spokane to Seattle on June 9, 1948. We would have been moved from Seattle by that time so apparently it was something I got in my head as a child.
You may have gotten what your grandfather said about Truman mixed up since you were a child. From what I read Truman SIGNED the pension act. I don’t know when the Government started to not keep their promise but I don’t think it was under Truman.
“The situation is clear. In 1946, President Truman signed the historic Lewis-Krug Agreement negotiated by UMWA President John L. Lewis and U. S. Department of Labor Secretary Julius Krug. This industry-wide agreement obligated the federal government to life-time health and pension benefits for the nation’s miners through the initially called UMW Welfare and Retirement Fund. In the deal, workers sacrificed wage increases for the promise of life-time health-care and pension benefits. These promises were obligations and responsibilities agreed to by corporate America and top political leadership in the absence of national programs, such as those in Canada and Europe, that were legislatively obtained through the political process. The plan was set up with royalties paid per ton of coal backed by a federal guarantee.”
“In 1974, the Employment Retirement Income and Security Act caused the above-mentioned fund to split into two separate funds, with the 1974 Pension Plan providing pension benefits to eligible miners who worked on or after January 1, 1976. As a result of extremely depressed coal markets, coal company bankruptcies, layoffs, consolidation and other factors there has been a dramatic decrease in the level of employer contributions to the 1974 Plan. In the last two years alone contributions have dropped by more than $100 million, leaving less than $25 million per year still coming in to the Plan.”
“As noted, there are many factors that are contributing to the problem. One is the failure of the federal government to honor its commitment to coal miners who made America a great nation.”
https://umwa.org/news-media/news/our-promise-to-miners-must-be-kept/
https://umwa.org/news-media/journal/the-promise-of-1946/
Here is a chronology of his years in office.
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/trivia/presidential-years-1945-1949
Did you know he didn’t have a VP from 1945 to 1949? Did you know on 19 June 1945: he flew to Washington State, becoming the first president in office to use air travel within the country?
How much things have progressed in such a short period of time.