"These are people who worked for the state and thought they would work and then retire and enjoy certain benefits: health care, pensions, things like that.
The devastating pit fire has brought things to a head very quickly, but with UK Coal's pension problems things were never going to end well".
"He has been here more than 40 years and is living on a pension, but things are so bad that he still has to work to survive," Mr. Clasadonte said.
Many of us are well aware that job security and pensions are things of the past.
But as we wait for the final report of the pension commission, one thing is certainly clear and that is that pensions are rising rapidly up the political agenda.
That pension was the thing I'd counted on to provide for us and it remained in jeopardy for many months.
It was pretty tough financially to start with, but when I got the war pension it made things a lot easier.
Mr. Wolff, for example, includes 401(k) plans and similar retirement accounts, but he excludes Social Security, most company-paid pension plans, and "things" -- the appliances, furniture and cars, for example, that families own.
People purport to speak on behalf of the working class, but there is no mainstream political movement that either understands or represents their interests: job security, a home to live in, healthcare, a decent reliable pension – all those things.
