Plan to end defined benefit plan angers unions
Household products giant Unilever faces potential strike action over its plans to end its “unaffordable” defined benefit pension scheme.
Employees at the firm, which manufactures brands including Cif, Flora and Persil, were told in April that the final salary scheme would close to existing members in January 2012. The scheme closed to new members back in 2008.
The company plans to transfer staff pension pots in January 2012 to a two-part scheme made up of a defined benefit career average plan and a defined contribution investing plan.
But union representatives from Unite, the GMB and Usdaw have announced they will ballot members for industrial action over the matter. This ballot follows an earlier union vote, which found that only 22 out of 1,459 respondents backed the company’s plans to close the scheme.
The planned changes would affect more than 5,000 of the firm’s 7,000 UK workers.
Unilever reflects a wider trend among employers to close their final salary pension schemes as they become too costly and scheme deficits grow larger.
The company said that the final salary pension had become “increasingly unaffordable and unsustainable” when the cost of company contributions became too large to manage.
However, unions have rejected the household goods manufacturer’s claims that the scheme is “unaffordable”, citing the company’s good performance despite the difficult trading conditions.
Jennie Formby, national officer for food and drink at Unite, said: “Unilever has been breathtakingly arrogant in the way it has tried to push these changes through.”
The company said it respected and acknowledged its employees’ right to express their opinions about the proposals.
In the same week, the TUC’s annual Pensions Watch survey revealed that pension pots for the directors of the UK’s top companies have reached an average of £3.9 million, providing an annual pension of £224,121.
The survey examines the pensions of 362 directors from the FTSE 10
COMMENT:
Company plan to transfer staff pension plan..
Manali
pgdm 3rd sem
Employees at the firm, which manufactures brands including Cif, Flora and Persil, were told in April that the final salary scheme would close to existing members in January 2012. The scheme closed to new members back in 2008.
The company plans to transfer staff pension pots in January 2012 to a two-part scheme made up of a defined benefit career average plan and a defined contribution investing plan.
But union representatives from Unite, the GMB and Usdaw have announced they will ballot members for industrial action over the matter. This ballot follows an earlier union vote, which found that only 22 out of 1,459 respondents backed the company’s plans to close the scheme.
The planned changes would affect more than 5,000 of the firm’s 7,000 UK workers.
Unilever reflects a wider trend among employers to close their final salary pension schemes as they become too costly and scheme deficits grow larger.
The company said that the final salary pension had become “increasingly unaffordable and unsustainable” when the cost of company contributions became too large to manage.
However, unions have rejected the household goods manufacturer’s claims that the scheme is “unaffordable”, citing the company’s good performance despite the difficult trading conditions.
Jennie Formby, national officer for food and drink at Unite, said: “Unilever has been breathtakingly arrogant in the way it has tried to push these changes through.”
The company said it respected and acknowledged its employees’ right to express their opinions about the proposals.
In the same week, the TUC’s annual Pensions Watch survey revealed that pension pots for the directors of the UK’s top companies have reached an average of £3.9 million, providing an annual pension of £224,121.
The survey examines the pensions of 362 directors from the FTSE 10
COMMENT:
Company plan to transfer staff pension plan..
Manali
pgdm 3rd sem
No comments:
Post a Comment