About Us

A Brief History of the PRC

Since its founding in 1976, the Pension Rights Center’s activities have been directed at trying to make sure that older Americans will have enough money to live on when they are too old to work.  Below are some of the Center’s key accomplishments over the years:

2000-2007

• The Center launched the "DB+ Initiative," a collaborative effort with national employee and retiree organizations. The Initiative has two components. The first focuses on the development of measures to strengthen traditional pension plans for workers still covered by those plans. The second is exploring proposals for a new private retirement system for future workers that would incorporate key features of traditional plans along with other innovative concepts.
  
  
• The Center established the National Pension Assistance Resource Center to develop and support a network of coordinated services aimed at ultimately offering information, advice and referrals to every individual in the country who has a pension problem or question about a retirement plan. “National PARC” provides legal training and technical backup to six regional pension counseling projects serving thousands of people in twenty-five states. It is also developing PensionHelp America, a comprehensive one-stop website for people in every major retirement system.

• The Center’s Conversation on Coverage is an unprecedented public policy initiative that has brought together experts from all perspectives to examine ways of expanding pension and savings plan coverage for low- and moderate-income wage-earners. First launched in July 2001, the Conversation’s three Working Groups issued their final recommendations at a press conference held at the National Press Club on May 11, 2007. 

• The Center spearheaded the development of a growing grassroots network that is working to help employees and retirees get their voices heard by policymakers and by corporate leaders. The Ad Hoc Coalition to Restore Retirement Security brought together activists from a variety of companies to advocate for policies that preserve pension and health insurance promises made to older employees and retirees.

• The Center prepared a Women’s Pension Agenda identifying gaps in the laws affecting homemakers under federally regulated retirement programs, and then organized a coalition of women’s and retiree groups that secured the introduction of legislation that would provide critically important reforms.  The Coalition is now working to secure the adoption of critically important reform measures.

• The Center played a key role in shaping proposed solutions to the retirement security problems highlighted by the collapse of Enron. Center-initiated provisions helped people get their money back in Enron-type situations and established an ombudsman office in the Department of Labor to address the policy concerns of individuals. The Center testified before Congress, was quoted in all of the major media, and organized Enron employees who expressed an interest in becoming involved in retirement policy issues at a national level.

1990-1999

• The Center published The Pension Book: What You Need to Know to Prepare for Retirement, described by the New York Times as a practical primer for employees that “deftly delineates the pension choices,” while providing a comprehensive look at American pension policies.

• The Center created the Coalition for Retirement Security, the nation’s first grassroots organization on pension issues. The Coalition brought together employees and retirees, from an array of different companies, who had experienced a variety of pension problems. Coalition members provided mutual support to each others’ efforts, and worked together to promote comprehensive solutions in the nation’s pension laws.

• The Center hosted a Pension Assistance Summit that brought government and private-sector officials together with counseling project directors to start to develop a national pension assistance system. The event resulted in a significant increase in government assistance to individuals and strong congressional support for the pension counseling demonstration program.

• The Center sparked the creation of a demonstration Pension Counseling and Demonstration Program authorized by the Older Americans Act and administered by the U.S. Administration on Aging. This program put into place the first federal program to provide dedicated resources to help people with pension problems. The Center began its Technical Assistance Project to provide training and support to counseling projects around the country.

• The Center, working with a broad-based coalition of labor and retiree organizations, helped stop companies from raiding millions of dollars of pension assets from pension plans, and encouraged companies to use “surplus” pension money to provide needed inflation adjustments for pensioners.

• The Center convened numerous forums, including a Mini-White House Conference on Aging, a Pensions Not Posies event, seminars for nonprofits, and Pensions 2000 Committee meetings.

1980-1989

• The Center created the Women’s Pension Project to reduce poverty among older women by closing the remaining gaps in the nation’s public and private retirement programs.  Working in coalition with a broad range of women’s, employee and retiree organizations, the Project spearheaded the enactment of four major reform laws:  
  
  
  • The Retirement Equity Act of 1984, which provides critically important benefits to millions of widows and divorced women whose husbands worked for private sector employers; and the Civil Spouse Retirement Equity Act of 1984, which provides similar benefits to widows and divorced women whose husbands were federal employees.
    
    
  • The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, which provides small pensions to office workers covered by plans where most of the benefits go to company owners and officers; and the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which ensures that women (and men) are able to earn pensions faster, and will not have their benefits completely offset by their Social Security payments.
    
    
• The Center established the National Pension Assistance Project to develop a nationwide legal assistance delivery services for individuals needing help to enforce their pension rights. The Project developed a nationwide network of lawyers, conducted legal training seminars, created bar association pension panels, initiated landmark lawsuits, and filed amicus briefs in major cases.

• The Center wrote a series of pioneering pension publications: A Guide to Understanding Your Pension Plan, published by AARP; Protecting Your Pension Money, SEPs: What Small Businesses Need to Know; and A Working Women’s Pension Checklist, all published by the U.S. Department of Labor; as well as Your Pension Rights at Divorce: What Women Need to Know, The Case of the Missing Pension, and a Private Pension Intake and Training Manual.

1976-1979

• The Center published the first-ever plain-English fact sheets describing the complex provisions of the private pension law, as well as Retirement Income News, and a Women & Pensions newsletter, and was responsible for the adoption of six federal regulations providing important protections for workers.

• The Center convened a Citizen's Conference on Pension Policy to encourage employees and retirees to become involved in the development of national retirement policies.  The Conference created the Citizens’ Commission on Pension Policy to provide input to the President’s Commission on Pension Policy.