The elimination of pensions has been the dream of corporations for decades. Towards that goal, they fight to break unions and any other organized voice for working people.

The Washington Post tracked the lives of the 998 workers who were laid off when McDonnell Douglas closed its plant in Tulsa in 1994.They lost their pension benefits. Most can never stop working because Social Security is not enough to live in.

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“TULSA — Tom Coomer has retired twice: once when he was 65, and then several years ago. Each time he realized that with just a Social Security check, “You can hardly make it these days.”

“So here he is at 79, working full time at Walmart. During each eight-hour shift, he stands at the store entrance greeting customers, telling a joke and fetching a “buggy.” Or he is stationed at the exit, checking receipts and the shoppers that trip the theft alarm.

“As long as I sit down for about 10 minutes every hour or two, I’m fine,” he said during a break. Diagnosed with spinal stenosis in his back, he recently forwarded a doctor’s note to managers. “They got me a stool.”

“The way major U.S. companies provide for retiring workers has been shifting for about three decades, with more dropping traditional pensions every year. The first full generation of workers to retire since this turn offers a sobering preview of a labor force more and more dependent on their own savings for retirement.

“Years ago, Coomer and his co-workers at the Tulsa plant of McDonnell-Douglas, the famed airplane maker, were enrolled in the company pension, but in 1994, with an eye toward cutting retirement costs, the company closed the plant. Now, The Washington Post found in a review of those 998 workers, that even though most of them found new jobs, they could never replace their lost pension benefits and many are facing financial struggle in their old age: One in seven has in their retirement years filed for bankruptcy, faced liens for delinquent bills, or both, according to public records.

“Former McDonnell Douglas employee Ruby Oakley works five days a week as a crossing guard for an elementary school in Tulsa, Okla. (Nick Oxford/For The Washington Post)
Those affected are buried by debts incurred for credit cards, used cars, health care and sometimes, the college educations of their children.

“Some have lost their homes.

“And for many of them, even as they reach beyond 70, real retirement is elusive. Although they worked for decades at McDonnell-Douglas, many of the septuagenarians are still working, some full time.

“Lavern Combs, 73, works the midnight shift loading trucks for a company that delivers for Amazon. Ruby Oakley, 74, is a crossing guard. Charles Glover, 70, is a cashier at Dollar General. Willie Sells, 74, is a barber. Leon Ray, 76, buys and sells junk.

“I planned to retire years ago,” Sells says from behind his barber’s chair, where he works five days a week. He once had a job in quality control at the aircraft maker and was employed there 29 years. “I thought McDonnell-Douglas was a blue-chip company — that’s what I used to tell people. ‘They’re a hip company and they’re not going to close.’ But then they left town — and here I am still working. Thank God I had a couple of clippers.”

“Likewise, Oakley, a crossing guard at an elementary school, said she took the job to supplement her Social Security.

“It pays some chump change — $7 an hour,” Oakley said. She has told local officials they should pay better. “I use it for gas money. I like the people. But we have to get out there in the traffic, and the people at the city think they’re doing the senior citizens a favor by letting them work like this.”