In light of the ongoing attacks on workers’ pensions across the country, the American Federation of Teachers is working “to reclaim the promise of a secure retirement and … to ensure that all Americans, after careers of hard work and service, are able to live independent, dignified lives.”

Defined pension plans like ours have been all but eliminated in the private sector and are the target of increasing attacks in the public sector. Right now only half of workers in the United States have access to any type of employer-sponsored retirement plan and 38 million households have no retirement account assets.

Pensions are not employer handouts. They are deferred pay for workers who have actually contributed to the growth of their fund, paid their fair share and accepted increased employer contributions in lieu of raises for the sake of retirement security.

Despite this, employers and governments continue to take away more under the guise of “pension reforms” that place the burden on the worker and refuse to address the “pension crisis” as a revenue issue.

As the AFT points out in a series of pension-related resolutions it passed at the summer convention, “Independent research and investigative reporting have revealed that defined-benefit pensions were often chronically underfunded by corporations and public entities and that funds that should have been invested were diverted to grant huge tax subsidies to corporations and public entities. Research and reporting also found that retirement security is being undermined by an unwholesome alliance between public foundations run by conservative activists and private billionaires who have manufactured the perception of a public pension crisis in order to slash modest retiree benefits and preserve expensive corporate subsidies and tax breaks.”

In Detroit, the court has set a precedent in its ruling that the city, because of its Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, may cut the pensions of city employees and retirees as part of its reorganization. The decision not only sets a dangerous precedent for other local and state governments, it also questions the validity of contracts made between state and local governments and their public workers, and destroys any sense of protection or security that workers had under their collective-bargaining rights.

The AFT, in the case of Detroit, supports the appeal of the court’s decision by Detroit unions and will fight for full restitution of pensions for the city’s municipal employees.

In other resolutions, the AFT pledges to support research and an investigation into the true causes, motives and intentions behind the manufactured “pension crisis” and to disseminate the results to members, the public and the appropriate legal and legislative bodies.

It also lobbies at local, state and federal levels to secure legislation for proper funding of pensions and to ensure retirement security based on shared risk, shared responsibility between employers, employees and government, and the empowerment of pension plan trustees to implement investment and funding policies.

Mel Aaronson, the UFT treasurer and a longtime trustee of the Teachers’ Retirement System, reassures us that as UFT members we have a financially secure retirement that includes a defined-benefit pension, Social Security, the Tax-Deferred Annuity and health insurance.

“Very few Americans can say the same,” he pointed out, “and the UFT supports a similarly secure retirement for all Americans.”