LL Cool J’s iconic 1991 hit, Mama Said Knock You Out, famously begins with the line: “Don’t call it a comeback, I been here for years.” Cool J later explained the lyrics related to his career, which many critics claimed was declining in the early 1990s. But much like LL Cool J’s enduring success, defined benefit pensions are far from a relic of the past, as critics often allege. Despite shifting tides, pensions have remained a reliable source of retirement security for public workers, and now in 2024 have been thrust into the national spotlight in the current presidential race.
Our mission at the National Public Pension Coalition is crystal clear: to ensure all public employees have access to a defined benefit pension. In the 1980s, corporations began eliminating traditional pensions, replacing them with 401(k) plans, a decision that many employers and retirement professionals are now rethinking. The New York Times Magazine recently published a front-page story titled “Was the 401(k) a Mistake?” This shift away from traditional pensions has contributed significantly to today’s retirement crisis.
The numbers tell the story. Shocking 2018 data revealed that 80% of older adults are struggling financially or at risk of falling into economic insecurity as they age. Even more alarming is the fact that 39% of households will not have the retirement funds needed to maintain their standard of living after they stop working. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the number of workers in the labor force over the age of 75 will double over the next decade, further exacerbating the problem.
This crisis isn’t new. In the early 2000s, President George W. Bush’s effort to privatize Social Security also ensnared public employee pensions. The same politicians beholden to Wall Street who wanted to gamble Social Security in the stock market also moved to close pensions and replace them with 401(k)s in a transparent effort to yield more fee revenue for financial firms. Under pressure from the Bush White House, some states, like Alaska, chose to close their pension plans, and today face massive recruitment and retention issues.
For years, pension supporters were told that robust advocacy for pensions could stoke resentment in other workers who lacked pension benefits. This caution led to a quiet retreat, but that era of silence is over. Now is the time to speak loudly and proudly about pension benefits.
With record-high support for labor unions, pensions are once again building momentum. Even companies like IBM, which had previously eliminated pensions, reopened its employee pension last year. Municipalities that previously scrapped pensions are reversing course and restoring pension benefits. In Pennslyvania, an activist and pension recipient who once maintained a so-called pension debt clock, has given up his crusade to scare people about pension debt and by his admission, is “waving the white flag.”
Pension opponents now need to invent situations to oppose. Earlier this summer, the right-wing National Review published a piece entitled Republicans Need to Promise Now: No State Pension Bailouts. The supposed proposal it rails against has never even been put forth, which exposes the truth: opposition to public sector defined benefit pensions has never been about fiscal responsibility; it’s about demonizing hardworking civil servants who make our government and our communities work.
Unionized workers in the private sector are also making progress to restore pension benefits. Last week, 33,000 union machinists at Boeing–94.6% of them, to be exact–rejected the company’s tentative contract, and an even larger share voted to strike. On the broadest level, the tension at Boeing is about wages, but according to National Public Radio, “the strike also stems from years of built-up frustrations.” The corporation’s underhanded maneuver to eliminate their defined benefit pension is cited as a significant source of machinists’ contempt towards management. So today, one of the union’s demands is for the employer to “reinstate defined pension benefits, which were eliminated about a decade ago.”
The positive shift toward old-school pensions has also entered the national dialogue in the presidential race. We have a major party presidential ticket led by two career public servants who have spent their adult lives serving us in government and will retire with well-deserved pension benefits.
Despite criticism from the Wall Street Journal, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, has stood firm in his support for pensions even in the face of cynical anti-pension headlines like “Tim Walz is Richer Than His Net Worth Suggests.” In response, Walz addressed a Labor Day rally, saying what pension allies should have been saying for decades: “That is my wish. For every American to have a defined-benefit pension plan.” Instead of a race to the bottom, with workers settling for less and less, Walz articulates an uplifting message. Everyone should have a pension, and no one should apologize for their service as a teacher, firefighter, prosecutor, or social worker.
So, if you’re in the latter half of your career and behind in saving for retirement, come join the ranks of government workers, and you, too, can have a reliable pension.
And in the fight for retirement security, don’t call what’s happening today a comeback. We been here for years.