Word: pensions
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...analysis of criticisms levelled at the University Pension plan and the explanation given by its authors makes clear both the good intentions of the University and the inadequacy of its pension system. Despite the fact that the administration contributes 126% as much as the employees, a maid who pays premiums for twenty years may at the end of that time receive only four dollars a month. Such a small return is merely a caricature of the security which a pension system is supposed to provide. It returns to the recipient just enough money to supply carfare to the relief bureau...
...many of Harvard's higher paid employees, like carpenters, the University plan is more advantageous than the federal act. But as a matter of plain statistical fact the provision which the University makes for its lowest paid employees does not equal the pensions set by the Social Security Act for workers on the same low wage level. Thus a maid who receives a pension of ten dollars a month after thirty-five years under the Harvard plan, would under the Social Security Act receive twenty-five dollars a month...
This illustrates the difference in emphasis between the two plans. The federal act weights the returns in favor of the lowest paid workers by applying to their pensions some of the money contributed by their more fortunate comrades. But while the Social Security Act redistributes the security, the University plan perpetuates without any amelioration the extraordinary inequality which a pension system should correct...
...between the two plans is to point the way to a much needed amendment of the University system. Harvard should incorporate into its own plan the redistributing formula of the Social Security Act. In this way, the University without adding to its own already substantial contributions can increase the pensions of its lowest paid employees. It is these workers whose security must be the first concern of any pension system...
...standard. If the University should choose to be guided by broad sociological considerations rather than by narrow logic, it will see that a policy of accepting the principle of security for the lowest paid and then failing to provide that security, defeats the whole purpose of a pension system...