Can We Defend Our Pensions Without Challenging Financialized Capitalism?

Details: Published on Tuesday, 28 October 2014 23:00; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1050 .... October 29, 2014
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Can We Defend Our Pensions
Without Challenging Financialized Capitalism?

Kevin Skerrett

Unrelenting employer attacks on workplace based pension plans are intensifying, and the struggle to defend them is becoming more challenging right across the country.

One recent development appears to be an important partial victory. Some 900 workers at Bombardier's Thunder Bay production facility, represented by Unifor, launched an eight-week strike on July 14, and the dispute centred on an employer demand to eliminate the secure, "defined benefit" type pension plan with an individualized "defined contribution" savings scheme for all new hires. Bombardier's proposal was hardly a new idea – private sector employers without unions have been unilaterally imposing just that for a number of years, and it's the model that has sparked a... series of important battles at unionized private sector employers such as Vale-Inco, Air Canada, the Big Three Automakers, U.S. Steel, and many others. Even highly profitable companies have been dumping or restructuring their pension commitments to workers – all workers where possible, new hires only if necessary.

In recent years, these attacks have spread into the public sector. In the period since the 2008 ‘great’ financial crisis, more and more public sector employers have been bringing these private sector pension "innovations" to universities, municipalities, and public agencies, all of which are reeling from neoliberal budget cuts of their own. The Conservative federal government has moved against the pensions of public service workers too – transferring part of their cost, and increasing the normal age of retirement on a two-tier "new hires only" basis.