On behalf of the 57 affiliate Unions and 11.5 million members of the AFL-CIO, I am very pleased to be here at the National Institute on Retirement Security.

Your vision for a real retirement security system that works for employees, employers and our economy as a whole couldn't be more important at this moment.

The roots of our economic crisis are the destruction of the good jobs that built the American Middle Class and the dismantling of real Health Care and real pensions that meant security for the Middle Class.  And now we face the aging and nearing retirement of 76 million Baby Boomers without a real retirement security system.

But we can change that and the kind of political and economic change we shape will determine not just the future of retirement security in America, but the legacy we will leave our children and grandchildren.

Today's retirement security crisis is just one of the many painful consequences of the failed economic policies of the past 30 years - policies of radical deregulation and corporate empowerment.  They've culminated in the worst economic decade in living memory - job loss, wage loss, collapse of the housing and financial markets, enormous growth in inequality and the massive destruction of wealth.  These policies allowed - and even encouraged - employers to walk away from what had been a system of shared responsibility. 

The result?  Today, fewer than 20% of private-sector workers have real, defined-benefit pensions. 

As a country, our challenge now is to build a new economy on a solid foundation of good jobs, opportunity, a return to shared responsibility and a level playing field that allows both workers and business to thrive.

Keeping the promise of retirement security must be part of this great transformation in American life - part of the legacy we seek to build and the future we envision. 

Today only 13% of workers say they are very confident about having enough money for a comfortable retirement.  That's the lowest level in 16 years, and this lack of confidence is justified.  The majority of America's workers will face retirement with far less security than their parents.

That's especially painful to me because it was our Union Movement that created retirement in the United States.  Before the rise of the Labor Movement in the 1930s and 40s, elderly Americans were the most impoverished age group in our society and only a privileged few received government or employer pensions.

With the enactment of Social Security and the growth of Union-negotiated pensions, elderly Americans became the least impoverished age group.

After the New Deal, it was collective bargaining that set the pattern for Labor Markets and not just for workers covered by Union contracts.

These were the years that produced the three-tiered American retirement system.  Government provided a foundation with Social Security, employers provided defined-benefit pensions and individuals saved for their retirement.  With this system, our parents could retire after a career of hard work, confident of a stable income they would not outlive.  They could sleep at night knowing that, should they die, their spouse would continue to have a dependable income. 

For millions of Americans - teachers and bus drivers, factory workers and flight attendants, construction workers and nurses - reliable, employer-funded pensions made their lives immeasurably better.

That was a legacy.  That was the world I grew up in back in Nemacolin, Pennsylvania.  A world where Working People had real pensions they had won at the bargaining table and on the picket line, a world where retirement, which had been a dream realized only by bosses, had become a reality for tens of millions thanks to Social Security and collective bargaining. 

Today, all three tiers of that retirement system we built are in danger.  Employers are increasingly abandoning their pension plans.  Workers with lost jobs and stagnant incomes are unable to save.

In this bleak landscape, Social Security stands out as the one feature of what passes for our retirement system that works for all Americans.  But too many in Washington seem bent on perpetuating the Bush Administration's attacks on Social Security. 

The Labor Movement took on those people and beat them in the Bush era and we will do the same in the Obama era.

When people lump together Social Security attacks with deficit reduction efforts, we have to remind the public of this basic fact: Social Security is not contributing to our budget deficit. 

In fact, the buildup of the Social Security Trust Fund is financing our budget deficit. 

And while the program faces a funding shortfall over the next 75 years, in pension plan terms, Social Security is 88% funded over that 75-year period of time and by any measure would be considered a healthy pension plan.  Relatively modest adjustments - without benefit cuts - can address even this long-term issue. 

Social Security is the most important family income protection program and the most effective anti-poverty program ever enacted in the United States.  One-third of Social Security beneficiaries receive more than 90% of their income from Social Security.  Two out of three depend on it for more than half of their income. 

Social Security is the sole source of income for nearly one in five seniors.  The average Social Security benefit is just little more than a minimum wage income, meaning a typical retiree needs almost twice the average monthly Social Security benefit for a reasonable standard of living.

And if that's not bad enough, growing Medicare cost-sharing means our seniors will need higher benefits just to maintain the replacement rate of the past 25 years.

Social Security benefits must remain at least as robust as they are today.  Quite frankly, increasing Social Security benefits would be a massive boost for our economy right now and for our long-term ability to provide all Americans financial security in retirement.

Social Security is the only reliable and guaranteed benefit for the growing number of people without pensions.  But Social Security by itself cannot provide retirement security for most Americans.  And despite all the flashy new investment products the financial services industry markets, traditional defined-benefit pension plans remain the soundest vehicles for building and safeguarding retirement income security. 

If you're lucky enough to have a Union, there's still a good chance that you have a pension plan. 

Sixty-six percent of Union Workers have pensions, compared with only 15% of non-Union workers.  But Unions are under increasing pressure at the bargaining table to allow employers to cut or eliminate real pensions. 

In the private sector, the funding rules for single-employer pension plans in the Pension Protection Act of 2006, coupled with new accounting standards, have contributed to an environment in which even healthy companies are freezing their pension plans entirely or closing them to new hires.

Our current economic downturn has made this much worse.  In many parts of this country, public-sector workers have the right to form Unions.  Not surprisingly, state and local government workers are four times more likely than private-sector workers to have defined-benefit plan coverage.  But public-sector plans are under attack through legislation and ballot initiatives.  In the private sector, over the past decade, many employers have abandoned their real pensions for 401(k) plans - plans with little or no employer money, plans with no protection for workers against market risk or outliving your money and plans with high investment management fees.

We hear different reasons for this, but here's the bottom-line problem: Our current system lets employers off the hook.  They can refuse to provide any benefits at all.   If there ever was an implicit social contract, it has eroded. 

My friends that's not the vision I have for America. 

Unfortunately, the vision put forth by policy makers in both political parties and the White House is for tepid reforms that address only the shortcomings of the 401(k) system.  I think we were all glad that the president included retirement security as a national issue in his State of the Union address last week.  But his remedies fall short.

Tinkering with 401(k)s by adding automatic enrollments as a plan feature will not bring about the change we need.  And what good is individual annuitization if you don't have any money in your account and you are at the mercy of the insurance industry on pricing?

At best, I'm afraid, these proposals will marginally increase retirement savings for those who already can afford to contribute, and will do nothing to make employers take some responsibility in this crisis.

In this crisis economy workers can barely meet day-to-day expenses.  How much then can they save on their own for retirement?  Plainly put: There is no way that 401(k) plans can adequately substitute for the loss of a guaranteed lifetime benefit.

Look at the data: The median account balance in 401(k) type plans for 62-year-old workers is worth an annuity payout of about $400 a month - $400 a month - hat just doesn't cut it.  And most workers will outlive their savings.

A Time magazine cover story last fall on the failure of 401(k) plans about summed it up:  "This isn't how retirement was supposed to be."  

After a lifetime of hard work, workers deserve to retire with dignity with the economic security they have earned. 

It is imperative to strengthen and preserve what remains of the current private-sector pension system by working on two tracks - through collective bargaining and through legislation.

The AFL-CIO is fully engaged in the current discussion on Capitol Hill about providing temporary funding relief for both single and multi-employer pension plans.  Without it, some plan sponsors may have no alternative but to freeze viable pension plans, cutting retirement incomes just when our economy is most vulnerable to demand-side shocks. 

But it is equally imperative that we look ahead and begin to design a new private system for future generations because, let's face it: Few if any pensions are being created.  

The AFL-CIO has joined with 25 other organizations to promote the "Retirement USA" initiative, which sets out the key principles essential to achieving a universal, secure and adequate retirement for all American workers.

We look to the best of traditional pensions - required employer contributions, money locked in until retirement, pooled professional investment and lifetime payouts - along with the best of 401(k) plans like portability. 

We must build on what Union-sponsored multi-employer funds and state pension systems have achieved in combining portability with the security that comes with lifetime monthly benefit payments.

These principles will lead us to a system that reflects American values-reward for work, compassion, fairness, foresight and prudent conservative management.  What retirement is supposed to be, a legacy worth building.  

But let us be clear: It will take money, real money. 

As long as employers pump up their bottom lines by dumping real contributions to real pension funds and choose instead to use half as much to fund savings accounts, we slip closer and closer to the return of poverty as the companion of old age.

But retirement security is not only a moral issue for our country, it is an economic necessity. 

Low incomes for older workers will mean less consumer power, fewer opportunities for younger workers and even greater pressure on future federal, state and local budgets.

I'd like to acknowledge the important work the National Institute on Retirement Security has done in highlighting this point:

Last summer you reported that for 2006 alone, public assistance expenditures would have increased by some $7.3 billion if not for incomes from defined-benefit pension plans.

Our fight to restore retirement security will bring a firestorm of opposition.  Count on it. 

But all meaningful social transformations are hard and take time. 

It took 20 years after Harry Truman first asked Congress for legislation establishing a national health insurance plan before Medicare was signed into law. 

And now, this year - 45 years after that - we are the closest we have ever come to meeting President Truman's call for universal health care. 

Universal retirement security is our next hurdle. 

Make it part of our legacy.