- Conference
- 2006 National Delegate Conference
- Date
- 23 February 2006
- Decision
- Carried
Conference:
1)recognises that the campaign for decent pensions must be central to our union’s campaigning over the coming year;
2)calls on the government to accept that the country’s pensioners have already waited too long to receive a less unfair share of the country’s increased prosperity;
3)welcomes the increasing support for the view that there should be an increased universal non-means tested state pension linked to average earnings;
4)reaffirms longstanding UNISON policy that this pension should initially and immediately be set at at least the level it would have been at if the link had not originally been broken;
5)does not accept that such an increase should be financed by a flat-rate rise in general taxation and/or by making workers keep working for extra years before they can retire;
6)recognises that the privileged few can already retire on very comfortable pensions at the age of 60 or even sooner, but that this is simply not an option for underpaid UNISON members whose life expectancy may in any case be some ten years less and who may in consequence die before they ever reach an increased retirement age;
7)recognises the outstanding commitment of UNISON local government workers in particular who have joined with workers in other sectors to defend pensions by raising the possibility of industrial action;
8)welcomes the decisions of the 2005 Labour Party Conference that employers should be compelled to contribute towards their employees’ pensions and that “No changes to existing schemes should take place without agreement being reached with relevant trade unions”;
9)instructs our National Executive Council to do everything possible over the coming year to sustain an effective campaign along the above lines to secure and improve the pensions of our Union’s existing and future members and their families.