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 Highlights of the Convention Message from National Organizer Tony Mazzocchi Convention Resolutions Sign up for Email Updates Join the Labor Party! |
Build
the Future: Labor Party Convention and Conference Resolutions and Constitutional Amendments Pensions for All: Ending the Corporate Theft of Retirement Funds Resolution After the last meltdown of Wall Street the Great Depression ensued. Nearly a third of the workforce was unemployed. The elderly could barely survive. As workers began to mobilize, the idea of Social Security - a defined pension for everyone - became a reality. And since that time, Corporate America has been trying to destroy it. From the start Social Security was a minimum benefit, something to keep is out of starvation but not enough to live on. Therefore, unions bargained hard for additional defined benefit pension plans - where corporations would set aside funds that guaranteed workers a specific monthly amount upon retirement, depending on years of service. (About 89% of unionized workers have pension plans, but only 50% of all workers are covered.) As corporate power grew in the 1980s, so did the attacks on both Social Security and on Defined Pension Plans. Corporate America and both parties told two outright lies: Lie #1: Social Security is in crisis - that we won't get our money back upon retirement because there are too many of us, because not enough workers are paying in, and because the money is not invested in the fast-growing stock market. Lie #2: Defined Pension Plans are not as good as the corporate alternative - 401Ks, which allow us to get a higher return by investing in company stock or the stock market through mutual funds. As corporation after corporation admits cooking the books, top managers are exposed for insider trading and cashing out as fast as possible, and as the stock marker as a whole goes into the tank, it is easy to see why Corporate America perpetuated these fabrications. They wanted our money. They wanted to save their money, and They wanted to put all the risk on working people. Social Security is not now nor ever has been in "crisis". The federal government has and will always have sufficient funds to fulfill its promise. But Social Security represents a large sum of money that makes Wall Street predators drool. "Let me at it", they plead, We will make you rich, if you invest with us". (And we will make politicians rich if they help us!) And what if the market collapses? Too bad for us. By their very nature, 401Ks are incapable of providing a secure retirement income for working people. They promote an illusion of security while allowing their corporate sponsors to shift the costs and the risks to working people. They are far cheaper for corporations than defined pension plans. Corporations get huge tax breaks from Congress to make them profitable. They are allowed to put in their own stock instead of cash and force you to hang on to them. They get to take all the administrative fees out of your account. And what if the market collapses? Too bad for us. Pensions for All: With the collapse of the stock market, and exposure on "infectious greed" within corporation after corporation, we have a perfect moment to shift the terms of debate. A few short years ago, workers, young and old, may have dreamed of winning the lottery by cleverly investing our 401Ks, or seeing Social Security money going into the booming stock market. Now all of us realize that casino gambling with crooked dice should not be confused with providing for retirement. Now all of us are open to genuine reforms. These reforms cannot come from the two parties that told us the lies and that sought to replace defined pensions with 401KS and privatization. The Labor Party must take the lead. In the short run we need to improve the current private pension programs in the following ways: · Like all retirement programs, 401Ks must be governed by strict rules that protect working people's life savings. · Employers must be required to provide defined benefit plans, which guarantee benefits, for all workers, as cost of doing business. · All pension plans must be fully portable as we go from job to job. · Working people, through their unions, should gain control over their pension plans by eliminating the restrictions in the Taft-Hartley Act. However, as a long-term goal we need and deserve what workers have in every other developed nation - a national defined retirement fund that allows each and every one of us to live out our final years in comfort. The full faith and credit of the federal government should guarantee it with not one penny invested in the stock market. Therefore, be it resolved that the INC a. form a working group to produce a detailed proposal for pension reform for all workers; and b. refine and adopt such a proposal for broad distribution in 2003. |
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