Those too, are about to go the way of other American Dreams -- a guarantee of a Good Job, at a Good Wage -- if only you're willing to work hard enough.
About to evaporate like simple but foundational Dream, that our kids will have it better -- in terms of opportunities -- than we did making our way in the world.
Now the Dream of a guaranteed Pension is about to sacrificed on the alter of economic expediency -- their not ours -- if our Congressional corporatists get their "just slip it into the omnibus spending bill" way ...
Congress could soon allow pension plans to cut benefits for current retirees
by Michael A. Fletcher, The Washington Post; AP -- December 3, 2014
[...]
Congress could soon allow the benefits of current retirees to be cut as part of an agreement to address the fiscal distress confronting some of the nation’s 1,400 multi-employer pension plans.Several unions and pension advocates opposing the move, which would be unprecedented, say that permitting financially strapped plans to cut retiree benefits would violate the central promise of traditional pensions: that they would provide a defined benefit for life.
“This proposal would devastate retirees and their surviving spouses,” said Karen Friedman, executive vice president of the Pension Rights Center, a nonprofit group. “The proposal would also torpedo basic protections of the federal private pension law . . . that states that once benefits are earned they can’t be cut back.”
[...]
Such is the world we now live in -- a promise to workers is only as good as the Congress that honors it.