Pensions

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Conference
2002 Retired Members' Conference
Date
27 June 2002
Decision
Carried as Amended

This Conference supports wholeheartedly Composite E which was carried at the 2002 UNISON National Delegate Conference.

This Conference notes that we all rely on the pension earned during employment to provide a reasonable standard of living in retirement and financial protection for our families and partners in the event of death or ill health.

This Conference is concerned at the following developments:

1)Only half the workforce are covered by occupational pension schemes and half of those are under threat from money purchase arrangements;

2)The move towards money purchase schemes and the closure of good final salary schemes for new members is detrimental to current beneficiaries.

It should be noted that if current UNISON pensioners had been on money purchase schemes they would now be dependent on state provision to supplement their income in retirement.

Accordingly, this Conference believes it is vital to both current and future pensioners to raise awareness of the threat to occupational pension schemes. In addition, the current uncertainty surrounding the whole question of pension provision reinforces the need to reverse the decline in the state pension as otherwise individuals will find future pension planning impossible.

Therefore this Conference requests that the National Executive Council:

a)Promote the advantages to members of joining and remaining in good pension schemes, particularly among young members who need to be aware of the threat to their future pension provision if defined benefit schemes continue to decline;

b)Promote the advantages of good final salary pension schemes and combating the arguments for closing them down and linking these pensions to earnings or inflation increases whichever is the greater;

c)Continue to campaign for the restoration of the earnings link and protection of the relative value of the basic state pension and opposing the means testing of state pensions, for example Pensions Credit and Minimum Income Guarantee.