Reimagining Pensions: The Next 40 Years, edited by Olivia S. Mitchell and Richard C. Shea. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016, 384 pp., ISBN: 97580198755449, £55.00, hardback.
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12235 |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Author | Gary Chaison |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
Book Reviews 455
this book by PatriciaBoling as a key reading for all those who are passionateto discover
the political triggers of policy change in the area of work and family.
VALERIA PULIGNANO
Centre for Sociological Research,KU Leuven
References
Allen, T.D. (2001). ‘Family-supportive work environments: the role of organizational
perceptions’. Journal of VocationalBehavior, 58 (3): 414–35.
Earle, A., Mokomane,Z. and Heymann, J. (2011). ‘International perspectiveson work-
family policies: lessons from the world’s most competitive economies’. The Future of
Children, 21 (2): 191–210.
Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge:
Polity.
Waldfogel, J. (2006). What ChildrenNeed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Reimagining Pensions:The Next 40 Years, edited by Olivia S. Mitchell and Richard C.
Shea. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016, 384 pp., ISBN: 97580198755449,
£55.00, hardback.
So much had been written recently in academic journals and the popular press about
the ordeals of retirement and pensions that they easily overshadow all other concerns
about other aspects of human resource management. First, and most apparent, is
the high drama when older employees are denied their rightful pensions after losing
or changing jobs or after their employers declared bankruptcy and devalued stock
investment pension plans (e.g. Enron in 2002). To further complicate matters, natural
disasters (e.g. hurricanes such as Matthew in 2016) obviously originate with neither
employers nor employees but do reduce the value of bonds backing-up pensions and
raise the risks that retirees face.
We see how underfunded pensions drive once thriving cities such as Detroit
into bankruptcy, creating a new area of legal practice — public bankruptcy. And
there are now federal and state (or provincial) laws that seek to reduce the risks
of pensions and enable retired workers to have payouts that they can live on. The
1974 US Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) provided standards and
protections for pensions and retiring workers (e.g. by closely defining the employers’
fiduciary responsibility). In California in 2016, the state legislature passed the Secure
Choice Retirement Savings Trust Act, which ordered businesses with five or more
employees that do not alreadyhave retirement plans to enrol their workersin a savings
plan based on ‘safely invested’ Individual Retirement Accounts. Many of the covered
workers would be in low-wage positions and plans were aimed at relieving workers’
anxiety about risk, about not being financially preparedto retire.
Pensions have become an explosive issue in collective bargaining and the cause of
strikes. For example, the strike of the Chicago teachers in September 2012 was over
pension changes relative to wage changes (what you can get in return for what you
lose). In the Airline industry,concessionary or give-back bargaining often cut pensions
C
2017 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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