27 September 2005
Amicus and Transport and General Workers Union members will be joined by Labour Party delegates in Brighton today in a march for pension justice.
The two unions want the government to act now to help the people who have lost their pension through company insolvency. They are also pressing for the Adair Turner report on the pension crisis, due this autumn, to recommend on compulsory pension contributions. Amicus believe that employers and employees have to be made to contribute to occupational pension schemes, with employers contributing at least 10 per cent and employees five per cent over a working career to achieve a decent living pension.
Amicus says that only 20 per cent of the people who have lost all or part of their pension entitlement after the winding-up of their schemes will benefit from the government's Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS) meant to help them.
The largest private sector union, which spearheaded the campaign for the compensation of workers who lost their pensions when their employers went into liquidation, say the scheme will fail the majority of the 200,000 people affected.
Under current plans FAS will only help people three years or less away from retirement. Amicus wants FAS to cover other victims. The largest private sector union also wants the Scheme extended to schemes such as APW and Wellman, where the employers are not insolvent but schemes members have no legal claim on their former employers.
The union says that to adequately fund all the victims will require much more than the £400 million set aside by the government for FAS and it will continue to press for increased levels of assistance. The union says in the region of £4bn is required to assist everyone who has lost out.
Amicus General Secretary, Derek Simpson, said: "Compulsion is necessary to allow workers a chance to look forward to retirement without the worry of poverty in old age. We hope that when Adair Turner reports to the government later this year, his committee recommends compulsion and we would then expect the government, without question to act.
"We also want changes made to the criteria for FAS which, as it stands, will not help the vast majority of people who need it. It is not reasonable, or in the spirit of the scheme, to allow thousands of people in their fifties and early sixties to remain in a position where they face penury in their old age.
"We and they believed that FAS would allow them to plan again for their retirement. There is a feeling that because the political and media spotlight has passed on, their predicament is being ignored but we will not allow these people to be failed for a second time."
