AFT’s Weingarten on Biden Administration’s New Actions to Protect Workers’ Retirement Security

WASHINGTON-AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the Biden administration released a final rule requiring financial advisers to put the best interests of retirees ahead of their own. The administration also met with unions and pension fund leaders to ensure private equity investments uphold robust labor standards:

"Every American deserves the right to retire with security, dignity and grace, but far too often their financial future is jeopardized by advisers who put their own interests above those of their clients.

"The result is billions of dollars in retirement income lining the pockets of those who should be dispensing sound, long-term advice, but who instead pursue high-cost, high-fee, risky investments that generate poor returns. Money that could be growing retirees' nest eggs is lost forever-and it is middle-class savers who are punished the most.

"That charade stops today. This new rule clarifies and crystallizes the definition of a fiduciary, closes the loopholes, and exposes the opaque compensation models that allowed this bogus advice to spread. And it will help alleviate the nation's retirement crisis that has resulted in nearly 50 million people financially struggling or at risk of economic insecurity as they age.

"At the same time, the Biden administration brought together unions at the White House, including the AFT, and five major pension funds and their trustees, to boost labor standards for private equity investments that promote collective bargaining, workplace safety and the elimination of forced and child labor.

"The administration has worked hard to make important and overdue changes to an outdated standard and now has released new guidelines that will help millions more workers live a full and fruitful retirement. It's yet another example of the president's commitment to putting workers' interests over vested interests, and Main Street over Wall Street."

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The AFT represents 1.7 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.