..And more proof that this Govt are just scum generally...

Reform threat to 'gold-plated' private pensions

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/persona...e-pensions.html

Hundreds of thousands of private sector workers face seeing the value of their pensions cut under reforms being considered by the government, it has emerged.

Ministers are reported to be reconsidering reforms, once deemed too politically difficult, which would involve scrapping inflation protection for final salary schemes.

Steve Webb, the pensions minister, has said the protections could be scrapped to help employers reduce their costs.Figures suggest such changes could save employers up to £7 billion a year in pension costs.

On Friday night, his comments sparked an angry backlash from unions who warned the minister to “tread very carefully” amid fears they would increase pensioner poverty.

But the pensions industry welcomed the proposed reforms first raised in 2002 by the government-commissioned Pickering review.

Under the private-sector defined benefit, or “final-salary” schemes, pension incomes are boosted by at least 2.5 per cent a year to protect against rising prices.

In Britain it is estimated about two million people are members of the “gold plated” schemes, which allow them to know how much pension income they will receive.

This is in stark contrast to other “riskier” contribution schemes, whose members do not enjoy similar guarantees.

Mr Webb said that by reducing the “regulatory burden” on companies, firms who operated “entirely voluntary” schemes could “take on a measure of risk”.

“That seems like a world we could move towards,” he told the Financial Times. “Clearly indexation is the biggest cost [for companies].”

Last week, Royal Dutch Shell announced that it would become the last of Britain's biggest 100 companies to close its final salary pension scheme to new members next year.

The Anglo – Dutch oil group said it planned to shut the scheme in order to "reflect market trends in the UK”. Shell's final salary scheme makes payments to about 30,000 pensioners in the UK and about 6,500 current employees are members.

Meanwhile thousands of workers at consumer goods company Unilever are expected to stage a series of 24-hour strikes in protest against the company's decision to also close its final salary pension scheme to existing members.

Figures from National Association of Pension Funds estimated that just under a fifth of private sector final salary schemes were open to new members, compared with 88 per cent a decade ago.

Len McCluskey, general secretary of trade union Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union, labelled the reforms irresponsible.

“A pension with no guaranteed increase is not really a proper defined benefit at all, as an absence of increases could easily halve its value,” he said.

But Joanne Segars, the chief executive of NAPF, which represents workplace schemes, welcomed the reforms. “This is a practical solution and we have to look at the big picture of what kind of pensions we want people to have,” she said.

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So, not content with impoverishing millions of public sector workers in their old age, the Con'd-'ems scum are set to do the same thing to private sector workers too... WAKE UP PEOPLE. This is not about "private sector vs public sector" workers as the Tabloid media tries to do its old tried and tested method of "divide and conquer", this is clearly about private AND public sector workers being screwed over by Tory scum who only have the interests of the employers and the corporations at heart.. But this is nothing new, pension schemes started to be devalued under Maggie Twatcher (you know, that "nice" lady that Meryl Streep plays from the film, whom you all seem to think is a "woman struggling against adversity and overcoming it.." in true Hollycrap style like she was some kind of Feminist Icon - pmsl), and when the Tories refused to stand up for the Mirror Group pensioners when it was clear that they were victims of fraud, well it also became pretty clear what their attitude would be. Mind you, not that New Lie-bore were any better, basically a bunch of Tories-in-disguise who presided over a similar utterly scandalous attitude towards pensions, and many workers saw their final salary schemes disappear into the ether, or just not be offered at all. And, as it turns out, taking out a Private Pension is no guarantee either, especially when your "pensions manager" is being conned by investment banks into investing in shit-sandwich "derivitives" which have been AAA-rated by the likes of Standard and Poor...

Seems to me that the "1%" (wherever they stand on the political divide) are hell-bent on basically depriving the rest of us of a decent pension in our old age.. Basically the only people that seem to be "entitled" to decent pensions are Politicians, City Bankers and Corporate Execs..... Everyone else is gonna be thrown under a bus.... -_-