SOAR Members Are Watching and Speaking Up!

Throughout April and May, current and retired USW members participated in the USW’s 2026 Your Union, Your Voice (YUYV) virtual town halls and gave feedback in their responses to the USW’s online membership survey.

While our YUYV virtual townhalls have concluded, our online membership survey will remain open through the end of June, and can be found at www.uswvoices.org

Don’t pass up on the chance to share your thoughts, because the feedback USW members and retirees have given through the YUYV effort has helped shape action across the union since the program started in 2020.

Guided by your input, our union has made historic progress on our core issues and is leveraging our solidarity to defend workers and retirees from an Administration that clearly doesn’t share our values. While the Administration is backed by the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the rest of the billionaire class, we have PEOPLE power!

In late April, I joined national leaders of the Alliance for Retired Americans for its 2026 membership meeting in Las Vegas, where we received important updates on how the Trump Administration’s cuts to federal agencies are harming retirees’ access to Medicare, Social Security, and other critical programs.

For example, in January, the Trump Administration launched a pilot program using artificial intelligence to determine our eligibility for routine care that seniors receive through Medicare.  Hearing a growing number of reports that this pilot program has resulted in seniors enduring longer wait times and, in some cases, being denied what is usually routine care, retiree advocates have forced congressional hearings to bring light to the growing crisis.

We also discussed the unfortunate reality that the current majority in Congress has failed to offer solutions for retirees facing skyrocketing prices for groceries, gasoline, heating oil, healthcare, and other everyday necessities.

This is clear when we review the Alliance for Retired Americans’ new 2025 Congressional Scorecard, which scores each U.S. Senator and Representative on the most pressing issues facing America’s retirees.

Before you vote in your state’s primary election, and certainly before you head to the polls this fall, make sure to go to www.retiredamericans.org to find out whether your federal lawmakers have been standing up for retirement security or voting lockstep with the Administration’s anti-retiree agenda.

For quick access to the ARA’s 2025 Congressional Scorecard, click here. Lastly, I encourage you to visit www.uswvoices.org to complete the USW’s YUYV membership survey and to receive updates as we near Election Day this November.