WHEREAS:
Discrimination against women during their working years adversely affects them in retirement. Women who work full time earn, on average, only 71 percent of what men earn. Moreover, women tend to be concentrated in the same low paying occupations and industries where they have traditionally worked. Low wages translate into lower pensions and social security benefits which are tied to lifetime earnings; and
WHEREAS:
only about 20 percent of women receive private pension benefits from either their own employment or survivors benefits from their husbands' pension. Women often lose pension coverage when they drop out of the paid. workforce to raise children, and the lack of portability of pension benefits keep women who change jobs from accumulating enough years in the pension plan to qualify for benefits; and
WHEREAS:
Few employers, especially in industries where most women work, either offer pensions or offer pensions at costs reasonable enough to allow employees to participate; and
WHEREAS:
older women must rely heavily on social security retirement benefits for support. Yet, the social security benefits structure penalizes women who drop out of the labor force to raise children, by averaging zeros in for those years they are not in paid employment. Often married women do better by taking a social security benefit based on their husband's earnings thereby getting no benefit at all from the years they worked and paid into the social security system themselves. A woman who works for 30 years at a job paying less than her husband's job gets no more from social security than a married women who had never worked outside the home; and
WHEREAS:
Since women have greater life expectancy than men, they are hurt more severely when pensions are eroded by inflation over time. Because they live longer, women also are more prone to chronic illnesses — conditions such as brittle bone disease (osteoporosis), crippling arthritis and Alzheimer's disease which often require expensive, long term care. Many older women must forego important medical treatment for lack of decent health care benefits. Older women cannot always obtain adequate health or disability coverage on an individual basis, and many employers have severely reduced or eliminated health insurance benefits for retirees.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:
That AFSCME, through its Retiree Department and Women's Rights Department, will continue and expand its program of preparing women workers for retirement; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:
That AFSCME will continue its fight against age and gender discrimination in wages, hiring, promotion and other terms and conditions of employment; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:
That AFSCME will work for a more equitable way of determining social security benefits for women and men, and will work to protect pensions for those workers who already have them, and for appropriate legislation to make providing affordable pensions easier for employers; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:
That AFSCME will continue its fight to protect health insurance benefits for retirees and will vigorously oppose cuts in Medicare; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:
That AFSCME will continue to make passage of universal health insurance including long term care a major priority; and
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED:
That AFSCME will continue to fight for passage of the national Family and Medical Leave Act and similar legislation on the state level which will guarantee workers the right to take job protected leave to care for ill parents and spouses.
SUBMITTED BY:
William Hudson, Jr, President
Daniel Turner, Recording Secretary
AFSCME Council 92
Maryland