Another Attack on Working Peoples Retirement Savings
The passage of the Your Future, Your Super Bill last month is another attack on working people and their retirement savings. The legislation schackles workers to their current funds and new workers to their first fund, introduce performance benchmarks for super funds, and impose onerous regulations on industry super funds which for-profit funds will be functionally exempt from. The measure to schackle workers to their current fund, or first fund, upends industrial default selection. For the vast majority of workers, the determination of their superannuation fund may now be easily divorced from the workplace. If we are not vigilant, in the future many workers may now have their superannuation fund for life determined not through their first job, but by their first interaction with a financial services entity, upon creating their Tax File Number, or through advertising programs in schools like Dollarmites. Members’ best chance at a good retirement is through their industry super fund. In response to these new laws, it will be more important than ever for Unions to educate members about the importance of super and the importance of being in their industry super fund.