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Since 1976, we have provided critical assistance and information to thousands of individuals with pension problems and questions, and championed policies that have increased retirement security for American workers. 202-296-3776
Why do we exist?
The Pension Rights Center is the nation's only consumer organization dedicated solely to protecting and promoting the retirement security of American workers, retirees and their families. The Center:
- Helps people obtain wrongfully denied pensions and other retirement benefits
- Promotes policies that address the problem of inadequate retirement incomes
- Explains, clearly and comprehensibly, complex pension laws and regulations
- Acts as a consumer watchdog to preserve key retirement income safeguards
The Pension Rights Center is known for its credibility and untiring commitment to economic justice.
What have you accomplished?
Every day, the Pension Rights Center directly assists individuals with pension problems. Additionally, more than a dozen improved federal laws and regulations are traceable to Center initiatives. Literally millions of retirees, widows, and divorced women are now receiving pensions as a result of our activities. Here are three of the individuals we have helped, and policies we have changed:
- When Richard Pennington, a machinist, was told that he wouldn’t get the pension he had counted on, he turned to the Pension Rights Center. We discovered that his plan had failed to credit him with vacation time, and he got his pension.
Richard’s situation, and that of others, persuaded Congress to create the Administration on Aging’s Pension Information and Counseling Program. Our National Pension Assistance Resource Center provides training and legal advice to the Program’s five regional counseling projects, which serve 18 states.
- Marjorie Doherty’s former husband was a federal employee. After his death, she was left destitute. A lifetime homemaker, she had no pension of her own, and because her husband had been covered by the Civil Service Retirement System, she was not eligible for Social Security survivor benefits.
Working with a group of divorced civil service widows, the Center was able to secure the enactment of legislation that provided special survivor annuities to Marjorie and countless others. Now we are working with the Women’s Pension Coalition to help other divorced widows of federal employees who were inadvertently left out of the protections of the law.
- Janice Winston, an engineer at what is now Verizon, had worked 23 years and counted on getting a full pension. When the company announced a change in her plan, she discovered that she stood to lose more than $200,000. Working with a grassroots coalition formed by the Center, Janice and her co-workers convinced the company to reverse its decision.
After Janice retired, she volunteered to work with the Center and grassroots activists around the country to campaign successfully for provisions included in the Pension Protection Act of 2006 that will prevent other companies from making similar unfair changes in their plans.
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