Still believe in the American Dream? Whatever.......
Retirement Insecurity
By James P. Hoffa, General President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, United States
For the first 160 years of our nation's existence, working until your last breath was the norm.
The ravages of old age, illness, disability and death were borne alone, or with the help of extended family. Seniors without family were often dumped in the county "poor house," along with orphans and unwed mothers. As industrialization drew people toward cities, thousands of Americans found themselves at the mercy of factory foremen and the volatility of the US economy.
Two things cured the chronic insecurity suffered by American seniors: Social Security and defined benefit pensions.
President Bush tried to gut Social Security last year. The pension crisis is so severe that the government's Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) is itself in crisis-with a deficit of $23 billion. And there is no end in sight, with the PBGC reporting that unfunded private pension obligations stand at about $450 billion. Beyond the private sector, it is estimated that there is another $500 billion in unfunded public sector employee pension obligations. You can hardly open up a newspaper these days without reading about another multimillion-dollar corporation that is cutting and running on its employees, and eventually, the taxpayers.
If you watch or read the corporate media, it might appear reasonable to pity these corporations in their struggle to liberate themselves from burdensome "legacy costs." But when you look at the greedy and irresponsible way in which many companies have gambled with their employees' futures, it is hard to feel anything but rage.
For years, companies offered workers pension increases in lieu of salary increases, essentially writing workers a check they can no longer cash. At IBM, workers accepted below-market salaries for years because the company promised it would take care of them when they stopped working. On January 6, 2006, IBM announced it was freezing its pension in favor of a 401(k) plan.
No matter how you cut it, workers' benefits are reduced when 401(k)s are compared with defined benefit pensions. Just ask the employees of Enron and WorldCom, whose 401(k)s were wiped out to the tune of $1 billion, respectively. No lawsuit is ever going to get that money back for them.
If the market goes bad, that's too bad. The money is gone and you've got to start all over again, but with what? For hundreds of thousands of workers, it's too late to start over.
It's that kind of volatility that led President Roosevelt to create Social Security. In doing so, he not only protected vulnerable seniors, but also guaranteed a more stable, prosperous economy.
The pension crisis has been brewing for decades, yet Congress has blindly led us along the primrose path, conceding to the demands of corporate lobbyists rather than their constituents. When it came time to close loopholes in the pension system or fix the fuzzy math in its accounting rules to make sure the money was there, Congress did not act.
Lawmakers have continually allowed companies to cry penniless in bankruptcy court, free to walk away with millions that could have gone to people robbed of their pensions.
They have denied workers the right to sue to get that money back. And they have structured the rules so as to invite companies to abandon pensions in favor of 401(k)s. It is a familiar tune that the government has been singing: Individual responsibility, corporate charity.
We expect this behavior from corporate America. That's why people choose to form unions-they are the anti-theft device for working people. But we should expect more from our government.
*********************************************************
Jealous? No. Just glad I'm not an American
Would you like to start over again in your 50's like hundreds of thousands of people are having to do? American Dream, my arse.
