United Airlines, like several major airlines, large steel manufacturers and other corporations, is going bankrupt.
And like many corporations declaring bankruptcy—or just looking for ways to cut costs—workers’ pension funds are among the first items on the chopping block. Under its proposed bankruptcy plan,United will forgo all pension payments for six years.
Cheryl Burns, 54, a member of Flight Attendants-CWA, says United betrayed her. A single mother with 27 years at United, Burns may be forced to sell her home after she retires because she may not be able to afford mortgage payments. The company will not put any more money into her pension account.
“I’ve worked 27 years for this company,” says Burns, who flies out of Washington Dulles International in suburban Washington, D.C. “I haven’t taken leave. Now they’re breaking their promise that I would receive a pension that I could live on.”
Fewer and fewer U.S. workers can count on guaranteed pensions—since 1978, the percentage of private-sector workers covered by guaranteed (defined-benefit) pension plans has plummeted from 41 percent to less than 21 percent today. Whether through corporate bankruptcies, job exporting or cost cutting, corporations are gutting workers’ pensions and putting workers’ retirement security in jeopardy.
Only 17 percent of workers who expect to finance their retirement say they were able to save for retirement last year, according to a recent CBS/New York Times poll. In fact, America’s workers have less and less economic security— with corporations sending jobs overseas, health benefits declining, health care costs skyrocketing and wages so low many workers must work two or threejobs to support themselves and their families.
Now, the Social Security system is under attack as well, at a time when workers such as Burns need to be able to rely on Social Security more than ever. “United betrayed me,” Burns says. “Politicians shouldn’t betray me, too.” As the nation’s most successful family protection program, Social Security has guaranteed retirement, disability and survivor’s benefits for hundreds of millions of Americans, never missing a paycheck in the past 70 years.
Using scare tactics to create an artificial crisis, the Bush administration is pushing privatization proposals that would undercut guaranteed retirement benefits for millions of workers. While Social Security does face problems that must be addressed, extreme privatization actions proposed by the Bush administration will make the situation worse, not better.
In the following pages, America@work examines the nation’s pension crisis and the Bush administration’s assault on Social Security and provides strategies and tools for addressing the attacks on the nation’s retirement security. Copy and distribute Social Security fact sheets and fliers, encourage your members to use sample letters to the editor to get the message out to the media and reproduce the graphs, charts and other materials in your publications and on your websites.
With employer-based pension security under assault, we must work to together to strengthen Social Security now more than ever—but we must take the time to get it right.
