The Union Campaign Against Social Security Reform

September 23, 1999

In the latest edition of the Capital Research Center's Labor Watch, Shanon Gutierrez details organized labor's fight against Social Security reform featuring personal retirement accounts.

Labor unions and their allies on the left recognize, Gutierrez says, that the tide toward market investment of payroll taxes is too strong to fight. As Cong. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) says, "Investing may have its downsides, but what are the alternatives?" But in coalescing around the Clinton Administration's plan for government-directed investment, labor has so far held the line against reform that would put control of Social Security funds in the hands of individuals.

All this despite evidence that union members, like almost all other Americans, prefer Social Security reform featuring personal accounts. In a recent Zogby International nationwide opinion poll commissioned by the Cato Institute, 53.8 percent of union members stated a preference for personal accounts, versus only 30.8 percent opposed.

And when asked who should be responsible for investing payroll taxes in the market, by a margin of 3.7 to 1 union members said that workers rather than government should be in charge.

Social Security privatization could make union members more powerful, by giving them a larger say in how corporations are run. But union leaders, Gutierrez concludes, "are trapped in an ideology that requires them to believe that only government can save the American people."

(For the full text of the Capital Research Center's September 1999 Labor Watch, see The Union Campaign Against Social Security Reform.)

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