America's Workers Deserve Retirement Security

Working families need three things to build retirement security: employer-provided pensions, Social Security and personal savings. More and more, America's workers are being expected to prepare for their retirement on their own but can barely make ends meet as it is. At the same time, Medicare prescription drug coverage is failing seniors and people with disabilities.

Employers are cutting back pensions. Corporate corruption has cost workers billions of dollars in lost retirement savings as companies such as Enron and WorldCom went bankrupt. Other bankrupt companies such as the steel giants are breaking their promises by taking away pension and health benefits from retirees.

A lifetime of unequal pay makes women and African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders particularly vulnerable to retirement insecurity as they are even less likely to have disposable income with which to save.

For most of us, Social Security is the only guaranteed retirement income. Yet the Bush administration and allies in Congress want to privatize Social Security, moving funds into risky private accounts in the stock market. Their plan would require increasing the retirement age, cutting benefits—or both. Read more.

Get the Facts on Retirement Security

• Only 16 percent of workers who aren’t in unions have pensions from their employers that pay out guaranteed amounts.
  
  
• Administrative costs for Social Security are less than 1 cent per dollar paid out in benefits. This is much lower than the average administrative costs of 12 percent to 14 percent for private insurers.

Who Prescribed this Drug Plan?

Most Americans ages 65 and older rely on Medicare, which serves more than 40 million beneficiaries in the United States. Instead of strengthening and modernizing Medicare to include a comprehensive, affordable prescription drug benefit for all seniors, the Bush administration in late 2003 strong-armed through Congress a Medicare prescription drug bill that moves Medicare toward privatization.

If you have an aging parent or relative, you've probably seen the new Medicare drug plan up close. Despite all the promises, many seniors are ending up with higher premiums and greater drug costs. One WORKING AMERICA member walked her 90-year-old mother-in-law, Ruth, through 40 confusing plan options. Six months later, Ruth is paying more for her drugs than she was under her former plan. "I don't know what they were thinking," she worries. "It seems like the drug companies raised their prices when the drug plan went into effect. I just hope I don't get sick."

Click here for help in making decisions about the Medicare drug plan.