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Full-Text Articles in Retirement Security Law
Pension De-Risking, Paul Secunda, Brendan Maher
Pension De-Risking, Paul Secunda, Brendan Maher
Paul M. Secunda
The United States is facing a retirement crisis, in significant part because defined benefit pension plans have been replaced by defined contribution retirement plans that, whatever their theoretical merit, have left significant numbers of workers unprepared for retirement. A troubling example of the continuing movement away from defined benefit plans is a new phenomenon euphemistically called “pension de-risking.”
Recent years have been marked by high-profile companies engaging in various actions designed to reduce the company’s exposure to pension funding risk (hence the term “pension de-risking”). Some de-risking strategies convert a federally-guaranteed pension into a more risky private annuity. Other approaches …
A Failure To Supervise: How The Bureaucracy And The Courts Abandoned Their Intended Roles Under Erisa, Lauren R. Roth
A Failure To Supervise: How The Bureaucracy And The Courts Abandoned Their Intended Roles Under Erisa, Lauren R. Roth
Pace Law Review
This Article addresses how courts failed to adequately supervise employers administering pension plans before ERISA. Relying on a number of different legal theories—from an initial theory that pensions were gratuities offered by employers to the recognition that pension promises could create contractual rights—the courts repeatedly found ways to allow employers to promise much and provide little to workers expecting retirement security. In Section III, this Article addresses how Congress failed to create an effective structure for strong bureaucratic enforcement and the bureaucratic agencies with enforcement responsibilities failed to fulfill those functions. Finally, in Section IV, this Article discusses how the …
The Report Of The President's Cabinet Committee On Private Pension Plan Regulation: An Appraisal, Thomas B. Ridgley
The Report Of The President's Cabinet Committee On Private Pension Plan Regulation: An Appraisal, Thomas B. Ridgley
Michigan Law Review
The growth of private employee pension plans in the American economy is astonishing. From 1953 to the end of 1964, the accumulation of assets of private pension funds has grown from 16.9 billion dollars to 75 billion dollars, with a projected accumulation of 225 billion dollars by 1980. At present, private retirement plans cover approximately 25 million workers, which is one-half of all employees in private non-farm establishments. Moreover, unions increasingly stress both the creation of pension plans where none exist and increased benefits from current plans. Thus, during the recent United Auto Workers negotiations the union sought and received …