A booklet entitled ‘Fair Pensions for All‘ has been produced by PCS, the general union Unite, the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the University and College Union (UCU) and the National Pensioners’ Convention (NPC). It looks at both private and public sector pensions and reveals a different point of view than the one spun by the media and ministers.
Starting from today I will be publishing the contents of the pamphlet in instalments.
Introduction: a crisis of fairness
There is an economic crisis in the UK, but it was not caused by excessive public spending or the ‘gold-plated’ pensions and pay of public sector workers. It was caused by a recession triggered by the banking collapse of 2007. Now there is another crisis: a crisis of fairness in which those who caused the economic mess are forcing everyone else in society to pay for it. It is clear whose side Cameron’s cabinet of millionaires is on.
Trade unions represent people in the public, private and voluntary sectors. Our members will often experience each through their working lives – as will their partners, friends and family. Good occupational pension schemes are important wherever you work.
Most pensioners are reliant on the basic state pension for the majority of income in retirement, but it pays below the government’s own poverty line.
Disgracefully today there are 2.5 million pensioners living in poverty in the UK. Only on in three private sector is now a member of an employer-sponsored pension scheme, public-sector pensions are under threat, and the state pension is now worth just 15% of average male earnings.
On the other hand a quarter of all tax relief on pensions, amounting to more than £10bn annually, goes to the richest 1% in the country. We hear about gold plated public sector pensions, yet the real gilded pensions are to be found in the boardrooms of private companies that have abandoned provision for their workforces.
There is a crisis of pensions in the UK but it’s not that we’re living too long or that pensions are unaffordable; it’s a crisis of fairness. In retirement, as in working life, we are highly unequal. UK pensioner poverty is among the worst in Europe – only Cyprus, Latvia and Estonia abandon their pensioners to a greater degree.
Action is needed to secure decent state pensions as the foundation for pensioner income and decent employer-sponsored pension provision for all workers in all employment sectors.
