PENSIONS LAW – DAYLIGHT ROBBERY

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Conference
2016 National Retired Members Conference
Date
14 June 2016
Decision
Carried

Conference believes that the most iniquitous aspect of the Government’s “Agenda for Public Service Pensions” [as far as our retired members are concerned] is its intention to grasp control of, and undermine the security of, pensions already in payment.

At a stroke, their intended legislation on the Local Government Pension Scheme

a)removes any effective influence from the new bodies and Boards set up only recently with improved union representation

b)removes any benign influence possibly stemming from good relationships developed locally between employers and employees

c)removes the requirement for future changes to be subject to Parliamentary scrutiny and legislation

d)removes the requirement for pension funds to be invested in the best interests of the beneficiaries

e)gives Government the power to control the funds by insisting that they are used for Government infrastructure projects, whether or not such investments are deemed to be sound

f)funds referred to in (e) above to include the whole funds without regard to preservation of adequate sums for the payment of existing pensions.

In other words, the Government intends to grab hold of OUR money without our consent – not just our savings but our actual everyday income – and use it as it likes. New roads and hospitals sound very nice: but who builds them, often at extortionate cost? Couldn’t possibly be all those lovely contractors who donate so much to the Tories? And if the hospitals fall down and the roads get holes in them, who pays for the repairs? Well no, not those lovely contractors. We pay, and we pay, and we pay – until our pension funds disappear and we the retired members are left destitute.

Conference believes that this is not widely known – even amongst our own members – and calls on the National Retired Members’ Committee to work with the National Executive Council and other appropriate bodies to:

1)mount as quickly as possible an information/publicity campaign aimed not just at our members but at the public, to destroy the myth of “gold-plated pensions”

2)create public petitions on the various internet petition-circulating bodies

3)encourage branches and members – especially retired ones – to contact their MPs and Councillors, to make sure that this latest piece of robbery is known as such – this to be part of an overall campaign involving retired members supported by working members, especially young members demonstrating inter-age solidarity.

TODAY LOCAL GOVERNMENT : TOMORROW THE REST