September 2006:

On Thursday, Aug. 17, President Bush signed into law the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which he called the "most sweeping reform" of US pension law since the enactment of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in 1974. The compromise measure will have broad impact on the way future pension plans are structured and funded, but to a much greater degree on single employer plans than on the multiemployer plans more common for longshoremen. It will affect pension outcomes, not only for tens of thousands of employees whose plans are currently hanging on the contents of the bill, but for millions of Americans who do not follow pension issues closely.

Affected groups everywhere are weighing in with commentary. With some 44 million Americans covered by private pension plans, bipartisan support for private sector reform was made possible by not stirring up a hornet’s nest of debate about stricter funding guidelines for public employee defined-benefit plans, which remain generous and are woefully underfunded. In any case, the bill may well signal the end of the era private defined-benefit pension plans. As recently as 25 years ago, more than 80 percent of large and medium-sized companies offered such plans. Today, fewer than a third do

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