Mary Love is a cleaning lady. She works for a contractor and currently is assigned to clean in a bank building on Forsyth Boulevard in Clayton. Four hours a shift, five evenings a week, she empties trash cans and dusts furniture.

According to her last pay stub in 2008, Mary Love pulled down $9.05 an hour. For 976.25 hours of work (including 24 hours on holidays) in 2008, she earned $7,198.82 after withholding. Her hourly wage recently was raised to $9.40 an hour, the higher end of the scale.

Mary Love is no different from any other American in that class of people known as "the working poor." Except for this: Mary Love is 85 years old.

She has 18 grandchildren and 19 great grandchildren. "I'm independent," she said, and "one of their best workers."

She is a feisty part of a growing trend: Older Americans, in rapidly increasing numbers, are continuing work long after ordinary retirement age.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of workers age 65 or older employed in the paid labor market doubled from 1977 to 2007. The increase was even greater for older women, and greater still for workers age 75 or older.

The trend is expected to accelerate, with a projected increase of more than 80 percent in workers age 65 or older by 2016.

More older people are healthy and want to stay active, and part-time employment provides them a productive outlet. But many, including Mary Love, also need to work to make ends meet.

Mary Love didn't become an office cleaning lady until late in life.

Born in Moorehead, Miss., in 1923, she moved to St. Louis in 1945. In the more than 60 years since then, she has worked continuously, at all kinds of jobs: as a waitress, at the old City Hospital No. 1, as a domestic worker and as an elevator operator at a clothing store.

She retired in 1985, at age 62, but quickly realized that she couldn't get by on Social Security benefits alone. That's when she went to work for a contract cleaning company.

This is common in St. Louis, according to Nancy Cross, vice president of the Service Workers International Union Local 1 in St. Louis.

"In other markets, janitorial workers often are new immigrants," she said. "In St. Louis, we see a lot of older workers doing janitorial work to supplement their Social Security and retirement."

That's Mary Love's situation. Her Social Security benefit is $580 per month. But the rent on her downstairs flat in a southside four-family is $440. Last month, her gas bill was $199. Her light bill was $28. Her monthly union dues are $41.

We asked the union whether it was possible to ease the dues requirement for members who, like Mary Love, continue on the job after their 80th birthday - whether the union might consider conferring some form of "emeritus" status on such workers.

"Workers who must work after normal retirement age are a special situation," Ms. Cross said. "We want to do everything we can to help our union's members be able to retire and we know every penny counts for them (and) at our next meeting (March) our union's executive board will discuss our dues policy for members who are working beyond normal retirement age."

But she correctly adds - and this is a rebuke to all of us - "The real problem is that so many workers can't afford to retire."

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("Unionist Emeritus" first appeared as an unsigned editorial by Eddie Roth in the February 16, 2009 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch).