December 2006

Dear Friend:

This year the Pension Rights Center is celebrating its 30^th anniversary. There is much to celebrate.

Our recent activities have focused primarily on our two major initiatives, the Conversation on Coverage and the National Pension Assistance Resource Center. Both projects made tremendous strides toward achieving our goals of increasing the number of workers with retirement savings and building a nationwide pension help network. In addition, working with grassroots activists and national women’s and retiree groups, we won important safeguards for older employees and widows in the recently enacted Pension Protection Act. We also launched a newly designed, user-friendly web site, www.pensionrights.org, and a Pension News e-newsletter.

As we look ahead to the next 30 years, our commitment to working for an adequate and secure retirement income system remains firm. But the challenges we face in today’s changing pension landscape are greater than ever before. With your help, we will move forward to find new solutions, both at the public policy level and through direct assistance:

To help individuals, our National Pension Assistance Resource Center will continue to build a nationwide pension assistance system so that everyone with a retirement plan question or problem has help in navigating the often bewildering pension maze.

To address pension inequities, we will work with our network of grassroots activists around the country to develop and implement a Consumers’ Pension Agenda aimed at closing unfair gaps in the laws and leveling the playing field for individuals in the courts.

To expand pension coverage, we will release the innovative proposals developed by the Working Groups of the Conversation on Coverage to policymakers and the public, and work with partnering organizations to promote their implementation.

To increase the adequacy of pensions, we will document the strengths and short-comings of current retirement income programs, while working with others to explore and craft alternative long-term solutions for the future.

At this critical juncture, please consider making a generous contribution (click here) so that all Americans who have worked hard and played by the rules all their lives will have the retirement income they need. Many thanks from all of us at the Center.

Wishing you the best in the year ahead,

Karen W. Ferguson, Director