By Cristina O’BrienU.S. Department of Labor
50 years ago, President Gerald R. Ford signed a law that would forever change employee benefits in America. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, clearly defined workers’ rights to pension funds, offering greater assurance that retirement savings would be available when needed.
ERISA was enacted in response to a slew of tragedies such as the closing of the Studebaker plant in 1963, when thousands of workers lost their hard-earned retirement savings in accounts that were poorly managed in their job-based pension plans. Promises were broken, and lives were devastated.
ERISA established new standards for providing information to workers, funding requirements and benefit protections and held the people and insititutions managing plans to fiduciary duties. The passage of ERISA also led to the creation of the Pension and Welfare Benefits Program, which then became the Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration, and finally today’s Employee Benefits Security Administration, or EBSA.
EBSA brings life to ERISA by implementing and enforcing the law and providing critical outreach, education and assistance to workers, employers, plan sponsors, service providers, and professionals.
Over the past 50 years, ERISA and EBSA have evolved in many ways, including expanding into health and other welfare benefits. Today, more than 150 million of America’s workers, retirees and their families count on EBSA to protect the job-based retirement, health and other welfare benefits they’ve earned over their working lives.
Together with our sister agencies and our internal and external stakeholders and partners, we are making sure that people we serve have the retirement security and comprehensive health care that they depend upon.
Through all of life’s stages and changes, EBSA protects the health and financial security of workers and their families by:
• Connecting them with lost retirement savings
• Helping them understand their benefits,
• Ensuring they can access the life-saving care they need,
• Stepping in when their pension plans aren’t paying benefits,
• Ensuring that their mental health is covered just like their physical health,
• Requiring plan fiduciaries to be prudent, loyal, honest, and not overcharge or misuse plan assets, making the lives of workers and their families better every single day.
The story of EBSA and ERISA is one of growth and change, but the mission has always remained constant — protecting the job-based benefits of America’s workers, retirees and their families.
That mission has and will always be accomplished because of one thing — the people who make up EBSA. We will continue to devote ourselves to working towards a day where more people have access to a secure retirement, making sure that promises made to workers and their families are kept, and helping American families have some breathing room and security knowing that EBSA will always have their back.
Learn more about the 50th anniversary of ERISA and EBSA at www.dol.gov/ebsa.
Cristina O’Brien is the regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration in Philadelphia
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