Bransfield's pastoral letter on the elderly | National Catholic Reporter

Bransfield's pastoral letter on the elderly | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: The coal companies of West Virginia used a company town approach to their employees - which was fine as long as there was coal in the mine and the workers survived (not a sure thing).  Now that is all gone, the companies have become "bankrupt" to shed their pension obligations while the owners still have a pile of money from those halcyon days, while the widows starve.  Not even the Union can save them when the government sides with the owners (if the miners had been the owners, I bet there would be a different story).  This is a bigger problem then West Virginia - but it is always good to put a face to the injustice.  The hog processors in Iowa had a similar fate when their companies sold out to Iowa Beef Processors and their promised benefits vanished.  That should never be the case and it needs to be fixed - either by clawing back that wealth, even from heirs, and/or by making the workers the owners and structure it so they can't be bought out without first being made fully whole as if retired with a pension and home.