Attack on pensions challenged this week

I've previously written about how many employees across all sectors deserve better from their pension schemes, whether final salary or defined contribution, public or private sector. What's clear from so many studies is how little most of us will be getting when we come to retire and how so many public sector pensions are not 'gold plated' at all, despite the rhetoric spouted in numerous debates. 


So much of that debate about pensions has been skewed by government and its policy proponents as a public v private, cuts v fairness debate, when the actual position has most of us, across all sectors, looking forward to relatively little in retirement and after a decision made by Osborne in 2010, even less. 


The attack on all pensions via the government's 2010 budget announcement that in future pension and benefits up-rates will be based on the Consumer Prices Index rather than the Retail Prices Index will be challenged in the courts by public sector unions this week. It's not only public sector pensions that will be affected by this 2010 decision, it's also estimated that hundreds of thousands of private sector workers will be affected as well.


Why the change? The CPI is less generous and the RPI a more accurate indicator of inflation, which of course is why Osborne claimed the former was the more appropriate index - it suited his agenda then and still does now. It's mean spirited, an attack on millions who had a 'contract' with their employers stretching back years. In numbers terms the estimated savings of this change equate closely to the vast sums shovelled into the banks to save our banking system (and keep those 'masters of the universe' in their inflated salaries, pensions and bonuses). 


As we find too often, profit and benefit is privatised for the few, loss and cuts transferred as a burden to the public and those who serve the public. It appears the vested interests of the few continue to set the terms of policy, rather than the needs of the many. That's sad, iniquitous and will yet again find a voice in the wider society and economy over the longer term as people's quality of life and their sense of justice affected. Good luck to the challenge in the courts.