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Trumka: Retirement Security Promise Must Be Kept |
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The ability to retire after a lifetime of hard work is not just an economic issue, it’s a moral one, said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, speaking today at the Retirement USA “Re-Envisioning Retirement Security” conference.
Joining U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and an array of experts and leaders, Trumka took part in a conversation about the breakdown of the promise of retirement security and what we need to do to restore it.
Trumka called the retirement security crisis one that
threatens American workers with yet another painful consequence of the “you’re on your own” social and economic model of the last thirty years.
Trumka noted that while day-to-day headlines focus on the short-term impact of the economic crisis, its effect on workers’ pensions and their ability to save for the future has been equally devastating.
In the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, Trumka said, the union movement helped to build a strong system for retirement security that included three important factors: Social Security, personal savings and private defined-benefit pensions:
As a result of these efforts, our parents could retire after a career of hard work, confident of a stable income they would not outlive. They could sleep at night knowing that should they die, their spouse would continue to have a dependable income. For millions of Americans—teachers and bus drivers, factory workers and flight attendants, construction workers and nurses—these reliable, employer-funded pensions made their lives immeasurably better.
Unfortunately, policy choices in recent decades have eroded the essential systems of retirement security. As bargaining power for workers disappeared, so did their pensions. As wages stagnated and personal debt skyrocketed, workers were less and less able to save for the future. Trumka noted that only 13 percent of workers say they’re very confident they’ll have enough money to retire. And since it’s harder than ever to afford retirement, we’re seeing older workers taking entry-level jobs—making it even harder for younger workers to get a start on the career ladder.
It is unacceptable, Trumka said, to go back to the era when seniors could expect only crippling poverty upon retirement. We need to rebuild workers’ bargaining power so they have access to dependable pensions. We must restore the promise that if you work hard all your life, you can retire with dignity.
Trumka recommended reforming and strengthening both labor law and laws governing pensions, so that workers can bargain for better retirement benefits and trust that they will get to keep what they bargained for. We also need to make sure that workers, who are more likely now to be temporary, freelance or contract workers—have portable pensions.
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Laments about the past “good old days”, wishful thinking about “unacceptable” conditions today, and hoping that “laws” will somehow … miraculously… be passed (by the Democrats??) to fix the extreme economic and social crises impoverishing working people , none of this constitutes a strategy to bring about change for working people and their dire needs today.
Mr. Trumka’s refusal to publicly support the AFL-CIO convention resolution supporting “single-payer” Medicare-for-All is yet another indication of complete intellectual and political bankruptcy, which indicates yet further decline in the labor movement at this most critical historical moment.
Trumka is right about this. But he could begin by understanding that Social Security is not in danger except from the people who would “reform” it.
Assuming the Trust Fund is repaid as it legally must be, the cost of closing the projected “insolvency” amounts to a payroll tax raise that averages twenty cents per week per year while wages are going up ten dollars per week per year. The reason the raise would be required is that the worker paying the tax is expected to live about six years longer than the workers the last time the tax rate was set. If you want to know more about this, my email is registered at this site.