From the SOAR President: It’s a New Year, and We Begin With a Conference

I hope everyone enjoyed a healthy and happy holiday season, is well-rested, and is ready to begin another year of activism and involvement in your community and your union through SOAR. 

As the International SOAR Conference approaches this year, I would like to give a heads-up to those who plan to attend regarding what will take place.

SOAR will be celebrating our 40th anniversary and will recognize some of the accomplishments of our members and chapters during this time.

During the Conference, we will hold elections to elect or re-elect members of the SOAR Executive Board.

The SOAR delegates in attendance will debate and vote on resolutions submitted by chapters and the SOAR Executive Board concerning how we operate as an organization.

We will discuss the successes of our efforts aimed at improving the quality of life for our members, as well as outline what steps we need to take in the future to maintain or enhance their standard of living. Some of the achievements we will celebrate include:

• The passage of the Butch Lewis Act (which protected the pension of many of our members in multi-employer plans.)
• Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (which put a cap on out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs and made certain vaccines available without cost-sharing.)
• The recent passage of the Social Security Fairness Act that repealed the Social Security Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset, two pieces of federal law that robbed millions of public servants of Social Security benefits they earned for over 40 years, (which reduced Social Security benefits for nearly 3 million retirees, many of them USW retirees.)

We will also talk about ways we can improve the financial stability of the Social Security Fund and ensure that anyone who believes reducing benefits is a good idea will quickly realize that it is a bad idea.

This will be our first SOAR Conference using the system that was put in place during the last Conference, which will allow for greater participation from our chapters. Larger SOAR chapters can choose to send more delegates, and USW districts with many members, but with smaller chapters could be considered by their Director based on district-wide totals and activism. Get your resolutions in on time, as the deadline for February 3, 2025, is quickly approaching. I hope to see you at the Conference, and I wish you all a happy and healthy New Year!