Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974
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A01=James Wooten
Author_James Wooten
business economics
capitalism
Category=KFFP
Category=LNH
congress
employee benefits
employee retirement income security act
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
erisa
federal law
finance
free markets
government policy
government regulation
health plans
health policy
history
insurance
jacob k javits
javits
labor
labor unions
legislation
marxism
nonfiction
pension reform
pensions
personal finance
political history
politics
private pension plans
retirement
retirement plans
unions
worker security
Product details
- ISBN 9780520242739
- Weight: 726g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 24 Jan 2005
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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This study of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) explains in detail how public officials in the executive branch and Congress overcame strong opposition from business and organized labor to pass landmark legislation regulating employer-sponsored retirement and health plans. Before Congress passed ERISA, federal law gave employers and unions great discretion in the design and operation of employee benefit plans. Most importantly, firms and unions could and often did establish pension plans that placed employees at great risk for not receiving any retirement benefits. In the early 1960s, officials in the executive branch proposed a number of regulatory initiatives to protect employees, but business groups and most labor unions objected to the key proposals. Faced with opposition from powerful interest groups, legislative entrepreneurs in Congress, chiefly New York Republican senator Jacob K. Javits, took the case for pension reform directly to voters by publicizing frightening statistics and 'horror stories' about pension plans.
This deft and successful effort to mobilize the media and public opinion overwhelmed the business community and organized labor and persuaded Javits' colleagues in Congress to support comprehensive pension reform legislation. The enactment of ERISA in September 1974 recast federal policy for private pension plans by making worker security an overriding objective of federal law.
James A. Wooten is Professor at the SUNY Buffalo School of Law.
