Retirement

Who Would Want To Grow Old Only To Grow Poor?

July 30, 2024 Eleni Schirmer, In These Times. Strategize! Class Struggle, Poverty, Retirement, Seniors, Worker Rights and Jobs

Despite the California sun in the summer of 1933, 66-year-old Francis E. Townsend’s mood was gloomy. He had just lost his job working as a physician for the Long Beach Health Department. Although the work itself had been bleak — attending to the city’s sick and poor was soul-wracking — not having a job was worse. Townsend, like millions of older adults during the Great Depression, found himself without savings, without work and, most of all, without hope. Who would ever want to grow old, Townsend wondered, only to grow poor? Townsend was not alone in his despair; suicides among 65- to 74-year-olds reached levels higher than at any time before or since.

Congress Is Leaving Nonprofit Workers Out Of Retirement Benefits

July 9, 2024 Chitra Ayar, In These Times. Educate! Congress, Nonprofits, Retirement, Worker Rights and Jobs

This year, believe it or not, many U.S. workers got some good news about their future. Key provisions of Congress’ federal legislation, SECURE 2.0 (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement) went into effect, providing important safeguards to protect the retirement savings of workers in the United States. These include mandated automatic enrollment in retirement plans, relaxed eligibility requirements for part-time workers, and matching employer contributions to employee student loan payments — targeted measures that particularly benefit people historically at the losing end of the retirement wealth gap: women, people of color and low-income earners.

Cooperative Ways To Weather The Silver Tsunami

December 26, 2023 Jaisal Noor, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Community, Cooperatives, Retirement, Worker Rights and Jobs

Sierra Allen, 21-year-old barista, had just ended their shift at Baltimore’s Common Ground Cafe on July 2, 2023, when a co-worker texted them the shocking news: Owner Michael Krupp was unceremoniously closing the beloved coffee shop for good and laying off its 30 employees, effective immediately. “It was a moment of shock. I was in a grocery store, and I burst into tears, because no one knew what was going on.” Allen was devastated by the news that they were losing a job that provided stable employment and a supportive community. The layoffs left them struggling financially—to get unemployment and to keep up with mounting bills.

Many Senior Citizens Expect To Die With College Loan Debts

September 12, 2023 Jon Marcus, The Hechinger Report. Educate! Joe Biden, Poverty, Retirement, Seniors, Social Security, Student Debt

Marjorie Sener was still in her 20s when she took out a loan for about $5,000 to get some college credits she hoped would eventually add up to a bachelor’s degree. That goal was thwarted when her partner became ill. “The burden of our living expenses fell on me,” said Sener, who lives in the Dallas suburbs. “I devoted all of my resources to keeping our heads above water.” But while Sener never got her degree, that student loan kept growing, fattened by compounding interest. Now, at 74, she owes more than $55,000, or 10 times what she originally borrowed, and has put off any hope of retiring. Sener still works, as a legal secretary, juggling her student loan debt with other expenses, including medical costs from recent cancer treatments.

Can We Ever Retire To Greater Equality?

June 22, 2022 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Create! Finance and the Economy, Retirement, Tax the rich, Worker Rights and Jobs

Do you have a good pension? Do you have any pension at all? Back in 1975, most Americans who worked for established employers could say that they do indeed have a decent pension. Back then, what the experts call “defined-benefit” pension plans set the standard. If you worked for a company with one of these plans, you could look forward to receiving — for every month of your retired life — a pension check based on your salary and years of service. These defined-benefit plans gave employers the responsibility for funding their employee retirements. Employers contributed into retirement funds and used the investment returns these funds generated to keep pension checks flowing. If those returns came up short, employers had to fill the shortfall.

Even Amid Give-Back Demands, Workers Can Still Safeguard Pensions

September 12, 2021 Steve Early, LA Progressive. Organize! Pensions, Resources, Retirement, Worker Rights and Jobs

In recent decades, a top management priority has been reducing the cost of retirement benefits. The pandemic and its economic fallout have generated a new round of employer demands for pension freezes, benefit cuts, plan conversions, and two-tier coverage. The Labor Guide to Retirement Plans (Monthly Review Press), a newly published book by Oregon union activist Jim Russell, shows why and how private and public sector workers should be mobilizing against such concessions. This book will be a critical resource for defending retirement security at the bargaining table and in the political arena. The Labor Guide is not only a highly readable account of retirement plan financing and administration, with a handy glossary of layperson explanations of sometimes confusing technical terms.

Workers Are Funding The War On Themselves

July 12, 2021 David Sirota, The Daily Poster. Educate! Class Struggle, Pensions, Retirement, Worker Rights and Jobs

As the private equity industry launches ads to protect its lucrative tax preferences, we should remember that this industry is the unseen man behind the curtain driving many social ills — from high hospital prices to surprise medical bills to nursing home deaths to media layoffs to a housing crisis that has become a human rights emergency. A *Businessweek* cover put it best: You live in private equity’s world, even if you don’t know it. But a series of new reports remind us that there is another person behind the monocled, mustache-twirling oligarch running the Emerald City’s secret control panel — and that person isn’t a billionaire. It is the faceless pension official in a state capital or city hall who is using workers’ retirement savings to finance the Wall Street takeover of Oz.

Teamsters Spent Seven Years Fighting For Their Pensions

March 16, 2021 Jeff Bollier, Green Bay Gazette. Resist! Labor Union, Retirement, Wisconsin, Worker Rights

Green Bay, WI - For the first time in seven years, thousands of Wisconsin Teamsters don't have to worry about their pensions being cut in half. The American Rescue Plan, which President Joe Biden signed into law on Thursday, included the Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act of 2021. The act directs the Pension Guaranty Benefit Corp. to allocate billions of dollars to avoid the drastic cuts. The act will shore up the Central States Pension Fund, a multi-employer fund for 1.3 million retired Teamsters, 23,500 of whom live in Wisconsin. About 3,400 members live in the Eighth Congressional District, which includes Green Bay and Appleton. Failure to act would have dealt a huge blow to those retirees who gave up wages to keep their retirement funds, and who have come to depend on payments to survive, said Brad Vaughn, a member of the Wisconsin/Green Bay Committee to Protect Pensions.

Retirement Shouldn’t Mean Poverty

July 26, 2019 By Katherine Newman, Otherwords.org Educate! Inequality, Poverty, Retirement

Vivian Majors spent her life cleaning houses while her husband, Martin, worked as a carpenter. Their bodies broke down in their 60s. Martin now lives in a nursing home and has Parkinson’s disease. Vivian, now 71, lives on her own and ekes by on a $960 in social security, plus $50 in food stamps. Hardened by years of physically taxing work that left her hovering around the poverty line, Majors, now retired, is girding herself for more years of financial hardship.

Thousands Of Retired Workers In Spain Demand ‘Decent Pensions’

December 18, 2018 Staff, Telesurenglish.net Resist! Pensions, Retirement, Spain, Workers

Thousands of retired people and supporters took over the streets in several cities in Spain on Saturday to demand “decent” pensions of at least 1,080 Euros a month, and yearly updates according, to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The protests started in Bilbao, capital of the Basque country, in January as a weekly demonstration and spread to over 200 cities and towns across the Spanish State, supporting other movements along the way. They were organized by the State Coordinator for the Defense of the Public Pension System under the slogans “whoever is ruling, pensions must be defended,” and “Our future: there’s no solution without mobilization!”

Almost Half Of Americans Die Nearly Broke

June 5, 2017 Maurie Backman, www.usatoday.com Educate! New Economy, Poverty, Retirement

By Maurie Backman for USA Today - In a recent GoBankingRates study, 69% of adults admitted to having less than $1,000 in the bank, while 34% said they actually don't have any savings at all. But apparently, this collective lack of savings doesn't get all that much better with age. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found not so long ago that almost half of Americans die nearly broke. Of the general population, 46% of retirees die with savings of $10,000 or less. But that number climbs to 57% among retirees who are single. Now when we take other assets, like homes, into account, the picture gets a bit less bleak. Still, 57% of single-adult households and 50% of widowed households had no housing equity to show for when they died. The problem is that dying nearly broke isn't just a matter of denying one's beneficiaries an inheritance. Rather, it points to a frightening degree of financial vulnerability during retirement. If seniors are passing without much in the way of assets, it means that in the years leading up to their death, they're ill equipped to handle a major unexpected expense, such as a significant medical bill. In fact, in that same GoBankingRates survey, only 37% of seniors 65 and older claimed to have $1,000 or more in the bank.

Brazil Paralyzed By Nationwide Strike Against Corruption & Impunity

April 30, 2017 Glenn Greenwald, www.theintercept.com Resist! Anti-Austerity, Austerity, Brazil, Pensions, Retirement, Strike, Workers Rights and Jobs

By Glenn Greenwald for the Intercept. It’s almost impossible to imagine a presidency imploding more completely and rapidly than the unelected one imposed by elites on the Brazilian population in the wake of Dilma’s impeachment. The disgust validly generated by all of these failures finally exploded this week. A nationwide strike, and tumultuous protests in numerous cities, today has paralyzed much of the country, shutting roads, airports and schools. It is the largest strike to hit Brazil in at least two decades. The protests were largely peaceful, but some random violence emerged. The proximate cause of the anger is a set of “reforms” that the Temer government is ushering in that will limit the rights of workers, raise their retirement age by several years, and cut various pension and social security benefits. These austerity measures are being imposed at a time of great suffering, with the unemployment rate rising dramatically and social improvements of the last decade, which raised millions of people out of poverty, unravelling. As the New York Times put it today: “The strike revealed deep fissures in Brazilian society over Mr. Temer’s government and its policies.”

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