Cite as: 517 U. S. 882 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
Appeals agreed with Spink that Lockheed had violated the OBRA amendments by refusing to include Spink's service years prior to 1988 in determining his benefits. In so holding, the court found that the OBRA amendments apply retroactively. See id., at 620, n. 1. We issued a writ of certiorari, 516 U. S. 1087 (1996), and now reverse.
II
Nothing in ERISA requires employers to establish employee benefits plans. Nor does ERISA mandate what kind of benefits employers must provide if they choose to have such a plan. Shaw v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 463 U. S. 85, 91 (1983); Alessi v. Raybestos-Manhattan, Inc., 451 U. S. 504, 511 (1981). ERISA does, however, seek to ensure that employees will not be left emptyhanded once employers have guaranteed them certain benefits. As we said in Nachman Corp. v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, 446 U. S. 359 (1980), when Congress enacted ERISA it "wanted to . . . mak[e] sure that if a worker has been promised a defined pension benefit upon retirement—and if he has fulfilled whatever conditions are required to obtain a vested benefit— he actually will receive it." Id., at 375. Accordingly, ERISA tries to "make as certain as possible that pension fund assets [will] be adequate" to meet expected benefits payments. Ibid.
To increase the chances that employers will be able to honor their benefits commitments—that is, to guard against the possibility of bankrupt pension funds—Congress incorporated several key measures into ERISA. Section 302 of ERISA sets minimum annual funding levels for all covered plans, see 29 U. S. C. §§ 1082(a), 1082(b), and creates tax liens in favor of such plans when those funding levels are not met, see § 1082(f). Sections 404 and 409 of ERISA impose respectively a duty of care with respect to the management of existing trust funds, along with liability for breach of that duty, upon plan fiduciaries. See §§ 1104(a), 1109(a). Fi-
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