Prescription-drug coverage won by Big Three retirees. After a 10-week strike, UAW wins, among other things, an early-retirement program for workers 58 or older with 30 years of service.

During his 23 years in retirement, Henry Neff had two knee-replacement surgeries, cataracts removed and surgery for a hernia. Under his General Motors Corp. health insurance plan, he paid nothing.

But a tentative agreement reached earlier this month between United Auto Workers, the union that represents Neff, and GM would require retirees to contribute more to health care costs. Neff will have to start paying monthly premiums and annual deductibles.

"To be honest, I think it is overdue," said Neff, 81, who retired after 30 years of work at GM's Boxwood Road plant near Newport. "They have been paying my medical and life insurance for 53 years. I have no reason to complain."

"We fought for this stuff and now they are going to take everything away from us," said John Breznatsky, 81, who retired from the Newport plant after 38 years in 1990. "It's money from my pocket. I earned this money and they are taking it away."

GM's proposal requires retirees to pay as much as $370 a year individually or $752 a year for families. A 90-day supply of mail-order prescription drugs will cost up to $18 from $10.

In lieu of changes to their benefits, current union workers will forgo or defer future cost-of-living raises, including a 3 percent wage increase scheduled for September 2006.

The proposal is subject to union approval. Changes for active employees may take effect as soon as that is completed. The changes to the retirees' benefits, however, are subject to court approval and not likely to take effect until next spring.

The plan would impact 750,000 GM hourly workers, retirees, their spouses and their families. Retirees make up nearly 500,000 of those workers, 2,000 of which are in Delaware.

Even though many GM retirees disagree with the changes being made to their insurance, they admit something needs to be done to address their company's financial woes. The No. 1 automaker in the world is projecting $4 billion in losses this year. And a reduction in benefits would shave $1 billion a year off an estimated $15 billion in health liabilities for retirees.

"Frankly, these are challenging times for both of us, and we are both being called on to address issues that are difficult," said Rick Wagoner, chief executive of GM, at a shareholders meeting Oct. 17 where he disclosed the company's plans to reduce benefits. He said the company's benefits were "a critical area of uncompetitiveness" for GM.

GM pays roughly $1,500 of the price of every new vehicle it sells toward health care for current and retired employees, company officials said. Market leader Toyota Motor Corp. pays $201 per vehicle in health care costs for workers at its North American facilities.

"They have one of the best benefits packages and most expensive benefits packages," said Jim Klein, president of the American Benefits Council in Washington, of which GM is a member. "There is room to bring that into closer compliance with the way benefits are in other industries."

The cost of employer-sponsored health insurance has surged 73 percent since 2000, according to an annual health benefits survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust. In 2005, premiums rose an average of 9.2 percent, raising the average annual cost of family coverage to $10,880, the Kaiser study said. Employees paid an average of $2,712.

Last year, about 30 percent of corporations with 500 or more employees offered retirees health benefits, according to a 2004 survey by New York-based Mercer Human Resource Consulting. That's down from 43 percent in 1993.

"The concern of the further erosion of the benefit is a possibility," said Rich Fuerstenberg, principal at Mercer. "Employers have the right to change health benefits at any time, including the elimination of them altogether."

"Everything we have gotten, we have fought for," said Earnie Carrere, 73, of Bear who joined the Boxwood Road plant in 1952 at $1.52 an hour. "When we started, we didn't have nothing."

Most companies didn't start offering employees health coverage until World War II. National wage freezes during the war made it difficult to find workers in a tight labor market. Employers began offering health coverage as a way to woo and retain workers, according to a 2002 report "Retiree Health Care Costs: Addressing the Growing Gap," by Fidelity Investments.

In 1950, following a 104-day strike under the slogan "Too Old to Work, Too Young to Die," Chrysler workers were able to secure pensions. That same year, the UAW won its first partially paid hospitalization and surgical program at GM, according to the UAW's Solidarity magazine. It wasn't until 1964 that GM, Ford and Chrysler workers gained full hospitalization, surgical and medical insurance coverage.

"You can make a million dollars a week and if someone takes a dollar off of that, that is a dollar less than you got," said Samuel H. Hollifield, 73, of Elkton, Md., who retired from the Newport plant in 1986. "They get away with it this time, what are they going to get away with next time?"

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