Gov. Jerry Brown helped California today take a bold step in the fight against elder poverty by signing a bill to provide private sector workers an opportunity to enroll in the California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program, a voluntary retirement plan with guaranteed benefits.
SB1234, co-authored by Sens. Kevin DeLeón and Darrell Steinberg, establishes California as a leader among states in creating new retirement plans for private-sector workers.
SEIU Local 99 members played a key role in moving this bill forward. Many of them wrote letters, signed petitions, and travelled to Sacramento to urge legislators and the Governor to pass this bill which will provide many workers with a path to help them gain retirement security.
“California child care providers like me have been working for years without raises, medical insurance, retirement benefits or even sick days to help our families achieve the American Dream,” said Amparo Moreno, a Child Care Provider and SEIU Local 99 Board Member. “We support working families by taking good care of their kids and I applaud Governor Brown for supporting families like mine by signing this bill into law.”
Secure Choice acts as a supplement to Social Security for low- and middle-income workers without access to an employer sponsored retirement plan. This affordable plan would be professionally managed and portable so workers could take their retirement savings from job to job.
The lack of sufficient retirement savings poses a significant threat to the state’s already strained safety net programs and exacerbates the state’s high unemployment rate as seniors are forced to work longer, leaving fewer jobs available for younger workers trying to enter the workforce.
Additional California retirement facts:
• 6.3 million Californians working in the private sector do not have access to employer-sponsored retirement plans. (University of California, Berkeley, Center for Labor Research and Education) • Nearly 50 percent of middle-income California workers will retire at or near poverty.
