UK : CWU to Royal Mail - ‘We'll strike to defend pension rights'
Any attempt by Royal Mail to cut postal workers’ pensions will meet the united and determined opposition of the union and its members, warned Terry Pullinger this afternoon.
Pointing to
the thousands of CWU Post Office members already voting on strike action over pensions and other issues, the deputy general secretary (postal) said: “As in the Post Office, the CWU in Royal Mail will use every means at our disposal, including strike action, to defend our members’ future pensions and prevent massive cuts to their incomes in retirement.”
The strongly-worded statement was made today in response to widespread press speculation that the company is considering an unprecedented attack on the pensions of hard-working postmen and women.
In this morning’s Guardian newspaper, reporter Patrick Collinson claimed that “nearly 100,000 workers at Royal Mail and the Post Office are likely to fall victim to market turmoil as they plan large cuts to their ‘simply unaffordable’ schemes” and that “managers say the collapse in bond yields means they must cut pension projections”.
Michael Pooler, for the Financial Times, wrote: “Royal Mail’s ‘gold-standard’ pension scheme is at risk of closure,” while The Times’s industrial editor Robert Lea commented: “After months of stalled negotiations, Royal Mail indicated that it planned to shut down its present retirement scheme, which pays pensions based on average salaries of members, in 2018.”
But Terry Pullinger cautioned both the press and the business not to “give an impression of a ‘fait accompli’.
“At our policy forum in March, the CWU reaffirmed our policy ‘to protect the Defined Benefit Scheme (DB) and seek to extend the current guarantees beyond 2018’,” he explained.
“We also agreed policy to improve the current Defined Contribution (DC) Scheme and the forum also agreed that, if Royal Mail announced under the legal consultation process their intention to close the Defined Benefit Scheme post-2018, then ‘the CWU will launch a campaign to stop Royal Mail, including an industrial action ballot’.
“Whatever Royal Mail’s stated intentions, the union remains fully committed to deliver on our clear policy objectives and safeguard the future of the RMPP and improve the DC scheme,” Terry insisted, and added that the union will also hold Royal Mail to the legally binding commitments on pensions set out in the 2013 Agenda for Growth agreement and its commitment that the CWU and Royal Mail will “jointly develop future pension strategy.”
Discussions with the business are planned at the end of August and updates will be provided in due course.
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