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Abstract #166649

Beth Almeida, MA, Executive Director, National Institute on Retirement Security, 225 F Street NE, Washington, DC 20002, 202-607-4328, bethaalmeida@hotmail.com

Events of the past several years have brought a renewed focus on the importance of pensions and retirement security. Financial crises in certain high-profile industries, like airlines, have imperiled the retirement prospects of hundreds of thousands of workers as companies abandoned their pension plans. Even financially healthy employers are moving away from providing traditional pensions, turning instead to 401(k) and other types of retirement plans. As a result, pension coverage in the U.S. has declined, even as the economy has grown, and employers' shift from providing traditional pensions, with defined benefits, toward 401(k)-style plans means workers are facing ever greater risks to their retirement security. This presentation will address these recent trends and provide concrete examples from airlines and other key industries. It will also discuss what the Pension Protection Act of 2006 might mean for workers' retirement prospects. Public and private-sector solutions to the emerging crisis in retirement security will also be explored.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the importance of retirement security to workers' well-being.
• Understand and describe recent trends impacting retirement security for U.S. workers.
• Describe how financial crises in certain high- profile industries, like airlines, have imperiled the retirement prospects of hundreds of thousands of workers as companies have abandoned their pension plans.
• Understand how various policy proposals help or hinder the goal of achieving broad-based retirement security for American workers.

Keywords: Labor, Elderly

Related Web page: www.goiam.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No
Any institutionally-contracted trials related to this submission?

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.