Stronger unions are needed to build a new, more-reliable retirement system for U.S. workers, Change to Win Chair Anna Burger says.

At the Rainbow/PUSH Wall Street Project Conference, Burger said the fact that many workers face losing their retirement security is one reason that seven unions created the Change to Win federation last year.

"America's greatness was that everyone who 'worked hard and played by the rules,' had a chance to own a home, raise a family, send their kid to college, and retire with dignity. But the rules today stink. They are stacked against American workers," she declared in her Jan. 11 speech. "The rules no longer work."

Part of that deterioration of the dream is that "pensions are being wiped out," she noted. Even workers who toil for firms with still-functioning traditional pension plans -- now fewer than 1 in 4 workers -- face the prospect of their companies dumping their pensions onto the Federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. And more than half of all U.S. workers have no private pension coverage at all, she added.

"Job security is a thing of the past. Part-time employment is on the rise. Giant corporations who salute no flag but their own corporate logo and worship no God, but the almighty dollar, roam the globe in search of the lowest wages," Burger said.

To help give workers more power to battle such problems, the Change to Win unions banded together last year to devote their time and money to organizing "tens of millions of workers who don't have a union" and to combating the multinational corporations on a multinational scale, she added.

But they also are fighting for future pension reform that would help workers, and would be unlike both traditional pensions and more-shaky 401(k) accounts.

Burger outlined basic principles for a proposed pension system: Universal coverage; adequate retirement income, "such as 70 percent of pre-retirement income" guaranteed against market shocks, inflation and longer lives; required predictable, stable contributions from all employers; simplicity; portability from job to job; investment pooling to reduce risk and increase returns for individuals, and worker election of board members who then run the system.

"A better retirement system won't be easy to create or to extend to all Americans. But we're not afraid of hard work, and we won't back down from a challenge," she concluded.

This article was written by Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.