THE STAFF LEARNED NEW STRATEGIES AND SKILLS THAT WILL HELP IMMENSELY DURING FUTURE LOUISIANA LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS.

On Monday July 23, the LRTA staff participated in the National Retired Teachers Association webinar featuring the Kentucky Retired Teachers Association Pension Advocacy Campaign. Tim Abrams, executive director of the Kentucky Retired Teachers Association (KRTA), spoke about the public battle to protect pensions and KRTA’s victory to protect teacher’s retirement. He discussed the importance of working with both retired teachers and active teachers during the legislative session. Even when Kentucky teachers were fighting their own battle over compensation, active teachers took a stand to protect pensions.

Tim also discussed the importance of educating retired teachers on impactful legislation so that they can have productive and informative conversations with their legislators. KRTA worked with retired teachers to help them understand the state of affairs of their retirement plan and impending legislation before the session began. Retired teachers fully leveraged their knowledge on the issues when they wrote letters or called their legislators to discuss the impact of certain bills.

We were also delighted to learn that KRTA used techniques in their campaign that LRTA currently implements. LRTA consistently monitors impacting legislation and works with TRSL to inform our members on matters that can affect them. We share this information via email blasts, articles posted on the website, Facebook posts, quarterly newsletters and state meetings. Our members are our largest defense in the fight to protect pensions. At the end of the day, our organization advocates for and protects retired teachers. LRTA will continue to work hard to educate our members on these important matters and to “make their retirement years great.”