The Pension Crisis Conference

Andy Irving of IFS conducted workshops on March 17 on "Problems and Issues in Private Sector Pensions" as part of a program on The Pension Crisis sponsored by the Rutgers University Labor Education Center. The conference attracted almost 200 representatives of labor, management and government. The presentation summarized and placed in historical context the factors that have created stress on private sector pension plans and reviewed some of the legislative and regulatory responses being discussed. The focus of the presentation was identifying likely unintended consequences of various approaches to the issues and steps that plan fiduciaries, labor and management can take to avoid the error of applying short-term fixes to long-term problems.