Protecting Workers' Pensions from Crypto Corruption: Why Maryland’s Senators Must Reject the CLARITY Act

Corporate interests and billionaire investors love to gamble with our financial system. When they do, it’s working people who end up paying the price. Our jobs, our homes, and our hard-earned retirement savings take massive hits whenever the market collapses.

That is why the 16.5 million union members represented by the AFL-CIO—and working families across Maryland and DC—are deeply concerned about the cryptocurrency market structure bill moving through the United States Senate. The CLARITY Act, a bill that will allow volatile cryptocurrency assets to recklessly access our pensions and retirement investments is intensely being considered in the Senate. This bill is bad for workers, putting working people’s financial security and retirement at risk—while shielding crypto companies from serious oversight and regulation and making big tech and venture capitalist CEOs richer.

The primary authors and backers of the CLARITY Act are the exact same venture capital firms, corporate tech giants and online platforms that actively fight workers' fundamental right to unionize. Maryland’s working families need our Senators Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks to vote NO on the bill. 

This Labor Day support for labor unions is at a modern-day high. Gallup polling reports 71% of American adults approve of unions with a majority (52%) of Republicans approve of labor unions, and 90% of Democrats, and 69% Independents. Surveys also reveal that over 50 million U.S. workers who generate the corporate profits and sustain our daily infrastructure, would vote to have a union if the aggressive corporate stalling tactics and broken system did not deny them work place democracy. 

Yet the corporate lobbying push for the CLARITY Act are the same tech billionaires that repeatedly fund anti-union legal battles, classification fights against gig workers, and union-busting consulting firms across the entire technology sector. These Silicon Valley firms have spent over $300 million in political spending pushing the CLARITY Act and are largely the venture capital firms and tech corporations who are also heavily funding the massive Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom. 

I want to make this very clear. The AFL-CIO sees the promise of technology and is not anti-technology or innovation. We are opposed to unregulated, unbridled expansion. It must be built around what makes us all safer, better, healthier and more prosperous. 

The AFL-CIO is opposing the CLARITY Act very simply because it is a bad deal for workers: it puts our financial security and retirement at risk. By lowering the regulatory standard for digital assets, the bill allows crypto companies to opt out of strict Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) oversight and choose the far understaffed Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as their preferred regulator.

If passed, the Clarity Act would support the spread of cryptocurrency into our economy so completely that it would be very difficult for the average person to completely opt out. Exposing our retirement accounts and the economy to crypto billionaires’ games would help a small number of rich and powerful people make even more money, while putting the rest of us at risk.

With minimal regulation and oversight, the bill aims to unlock access to billions of dollars in pension plans and 401(k) accounts. The tokenization provisions it contains are dangerous and would allow corporations to issue “shadow stocks” on a blockchain, bypassing SEC disclosures. This would expose the hard-earned pension and retirement funds of everyday workers to unvetted, highly volatile digital assets without their consent while protecting rich and powerful companies and putting working people’s hard-earned financial benefits at risk.

While working families struggle to make ends meet amid higher costs of everything from gasoline, to utilities, to groceries, this legislation does nothing to stop the rampant corruption we’re witnessing every day that lines the pockets of elected officials and political insiders with billions of dollars and makes billionaires richer.

Thankfully, our Senators have spoken out on the CLARITY Act’s flaws. Senator Van Hollen has been a leading voice against this unprecedented corruption — voting against the CLARITY Act, sponsoring an amendment to bar the President, members of Congress, and their families from profiting off the digital assets they regulate, and warning of the bill’s potential for self-dealing and abuse. Senator Alsobrooks has also been vocal in condemning this blatant corruption, advocating for changes to the bill to protect the public interest. However, the CLARITY Act has inherent structural flaws that cannot be remedied by amendments.

We urge our Senators to remain steadfast and vote NO on the CLARITY Act. Congress must not allow the crypto industry to turn workers’ hard-earned retirement savings into a gamble that enriches billionaires and politicians.