Unions and Pensions

Moby

Meeper wrote: »

Read history? Not really. I prefer to consider the present because although it's important to learn the lessons of the past, there is no need to re-learn them over and over in perpetuity. Yes, the unions were valuable in particular with respect to the miners and other higher-risk professions initially to improve their safety and then in other professions to improve their working conditions generally. They are to be commended. Their actions historically brought about massive changes in employment legislation and human resources departments now run companies. Don't be fooled about that. An employee now cannot be dismissed for poor performance. They have to go through an expensive and time-consuming series of additional coaching, personal development plans, improvement plans, and so on. If you identify an employee who cannot perform his role to satisfaction, the onus is on the employer to train them more adequately. If that employee is simply not competent and you made a mistake in recruiting him/her, you're stuck. No need for a union here, if the guy gets fired he can toddle off to a tribunal and get his satisfaction that way.

At a risk of repeating BobQ's points......I don't know how many times we can say this. There are huge issues of discrimination, bullying and failure to apply employment legislation all over this country TODAY!

What I'm saying is - yes, let's look at the past for the value of the union, but let's recognise that the country is not stuck in the 70's and the working conditions are NOTHING like those that the miners had to put up with. Looking to the past to validate the current of the union is ridiculous, and tantamount to saying that people in their comfortable offices nowadays need the same level of protection as those putting their lives at risk digging for coal. Ludicrous.

At least you acknowledge the value of lessons learned from history but....are you saying that everyone now works in a comfortable office? Did you hear what the emergemcy services had to do yesterday during that terrible crash on Junction 24/25 M5. They were doing their jobs but they are also human beings and they look to their unions to offer them support and protection. In my view we are returning to the industrial relations of the 70's.....The level of industrial disputes has shot up recently! and by the way even people working in 'comfortable' offices sometimes need advice/protection from a union.

The ultimate purpose of a business is profit, quite right. But to what end? For the shareholders, certainly. Who are the shareholders? The employees in many cases. The tax-payers, the pension funds, the general public can all be shareholders of these organisations. An owner looking to squeeze staffing costs as much as possible will not have a business which prospers in the long-term, because the more you squeeze the cost, the more you reduce the qualiy of what you have. As you reduce your quality, you reduce your service levels and you lose business, costing you money. That having been said, let's consider British Airways again. Recently, the union, via the employees, held the company to ransom. The company identified that there was an area where it was over-spending and did not require so many individuals on a flight in order to offer a comparable service, and with the company not making any profit (it was making a loss), they identified that they could sustain their service with one attendant less per flight. By doing this, the company could reduce its loss-making position and be able to offer stability and a long-term future for the employees which remained. They had to make some redundancies for the longer-term good of the company as a whole. The actions of the union in this case put the whole company at risk, and rather than accepting that some redundancies were inevitable, they almost cost EVERYONE their jobs, driving the company to the brink of bankruptcy. How can anyone defend this appalling action?

Good if the employees are shareholders and share in the wealth of the company....like Waitrose...no problem. A good well run company!
The unions are there for company's that don't do that and you've already been told what the proportions are....also there are always individual abuses...no matter how well a company is run.... that need to be addressed. Remember Meeper what we are talking about here when you talk about 'rationalisation' in BA....you are talking about peoples lives, redundancy and its related problems. Willie Walsh wanted a fight....he wasn't negotiating in a genuine way and I find it rather ridiculous that someone who doesn't actually know the real issues would try and defend him. That Guy has a terrible reputation for arrogance...not a good example!

But, back to the matter at hand, and the union telling people to get out of their pensions - people on here may not believe me. I'm not overly concerned with their belief, to be honest. There is nothing I could do to prove this point. I could attach an audio file of a hidden mic conversation, but that could be argued as "made up". I could post a video, which would be called "staged". I could tell you which union and company, but of course you're not going to find anything official on their websites or in the public domain, because there's no way that they would be brave enough to put the information in the public domain that they prefer to whisper to people and spread by way of speech to members.

You ask for proof. I can give you none, other than the fact (indeed, a fact, whether you believe it or not) that this is what I was told by a client of mine recently, and I had no reason to disbelieve him, just like nobody here has any reason to disbelieve me. If you choose to disbelieve, that's up to you, but saying "prove it or it didn't happen" is just childish and silly. Why else would I have put up the thread in the first place?

You were wrong to start such a contentious thread in my view but at least Atush believes you . Seriously though....What if I started a thread saying all IFA's were corrupt? What do you think would happen? Surely I'd be told to put up or shut up? To me it was clear you had information that you wanted to 'share' because it reinforced your own political view. As a result it was partial and lacked perspective!

lvader

Moby wrote: »

At a risk of repeating BobQ's points......I don't know how many times we can say this. There are huge issues of discrimination, bullying and failure to apply employment legislation all over this country TODAY!

An employment lawyer is likely to be more effective in these cases than a chubby uneducated union rep.

Thicko2

This old debate seems to have cropped up again! Last time i recall no concrete facts behind these allegations as well.

I am not a union member but out of interest i turned up to the unison drop in session for further information on their recent ballot on strike action. The shock of the local rep seeing me there as a senior manager made me chuckle.

The documentation told members about the benefits of the pension and indeed that it remains so. Encouraging members to become members of the scheme, not leave!

It highlighted unison's analysis, of pay more, work longer, get less. Which remains a truthful comment based on the offer at the time (and i still think it does).

I heard none of this alleged proproganda of leave the pension scheme, it will be worthless etc. Just the proposals makes it less valuable and Huttons evidence of 2% of GDP to 1.4% without futher changes and particularly in the NHS the condem plans to remove protection for transfer under the potential removal of fairdeal.

Why the hell would unisons have a fundemental fight over pensions entitlements and then tell members to leave?

jem16

Thicko2 wrote: »

Why the hell would unisons have a fundemental fight over pensions entitlements and then tell members to leave?

Exactly! It makes no sense.

What I do suspect is happening is that union members are hearing the work longer, pay more and get less and then coming to their own conclusions that their pension will be worthless.

Most people that say they want to leave are saying they cannot afford the increased contributions.

Thicko2

jem16 wrote: »

Exactly! It makes no sense.

What I do suspect is happening is that union members are hearing the work longer, pay more and get less and then coming to their own conclusions that their pension will be worthless.

Most people that say they want to leave are saying they cannot afford the increased contributions.

With RPI at 5.6% and increase contributions factored in over the next 3 years and no payrises i fear this is the doomsday scenario. This will make the pay as you go schemes such as the NHS potentially implode. PArticularly if GPs who pay in the employer contributions as well decide to stop contribution.

In terms of the governements late, late offer. It is clearly divide and rule by buying off the 25% due to retire i the next 10 years. Also lots of smoke and mirrors in the gov's assumptions when they table these generous schemes in parliament. 2% CPI every years and wage increases of 4.5%? Who the hell believes those? Despite all these daily mail strories of large increases i think the total public sector wage growth over CPI has been less than 1% over the brown years?

I suspect that most of the unions are fairly reasonable. The sticking point is the extra contributions over the next 3 years. They cannot see these supporting schemes and bolstering them, e.g. in LGPS they will just cut grant funding to councils pro rata and in NHS they will just take the additional yearly surplus from the scheme back to the treasury. Movement here and in my view an agreement will be reached. Maybe at a point when public sector workers begin to recieve some cost of living increases.

Compared to £10bn in tax relief to the highest 1% of earners in tax relief on their pensions it is small. Many have just had a 49% increase in salary as well.

BobQ

atush wrote: »

I would in fact be very surpised and shocked to see a national union doing this, and do suspect it is over zealous local reps as you say.

But given the annecdotal evidence here (incl form some who actually beleived it until they heard the actual truth of some parts of the proposals)I am still not taking the opinion that BobQ and others are having in that people are making this stuff up (they might not use the actual word liar but that is what they are saying all the same).

.

At the risk of over analyzing this matter, someone posting such a claim could:
(a) Be lying and motivated by a purely political or anti-union agenda
(b) Be inaccurately reporting what they understood from someone who claimed to be a TU rep but was not
(c) Be inaccurately reporting what they understood from someone who was a TU rep
(d) Be accurately reporting what an ill informed/mischievous TU rep said.
(e) Be accurately reporting what was said by an official TU spokesperson as directed by the TU.

Nobody can say for certain without more information which of these (or variants) apply. If (b), (c) or (d) applies I would not say the person is lying.

Personally I would be surprised if (d) or (e) applied, and I see no evidence it does. Equally I have no evidence of (a) applying.

The_Angry_Jock

jem16 wrote: »

Most people that say they want to leave are saying they cannot afford the increased contributions.

Maybe they should be asking themselves how it is that they can't afford a extra couple of % to better secure their own future.

People have overstretched themselves in the good times and are now struggling to pay their dues...just like the government.

I'm not sitting on my high horse here, I've done it myself, I'm paying out a hefty 25% of my salary to paying off debt (let's not mention the outrageous mortgage) but I would (/have) make some serious cut backs to better my situation in the long term.

I make less than the national average salary.

atush

BobQ wrote: »

At the risk of over analyzing this matter, someone posting such a claim could:
(a) Be lying and motivated by a purely political or anti-union agenda
(b) Be inaccurately reporting what they understood from someone who claimed to be a TU rep but was not
(c) Be inaccurately reporting what they understood from someone who was a TU rep
(d) Be accurately reporting what an ill informed/mischievous TU rep said.
(e) Be accurately reporting what was said by an official TU spokesperson as directed by the TU.

Nobody can say for certain without more information which of these (or variants) apply. If (b), (c) or (d) applies I would not say the person is lying.

Personally I would be surprised if (d) or (e) applied, and I see no evidence it does. Equally I have no evidence of (a) applying.

I would say all of those are well reasoned points.

But I still think in the one linked to, that given they read the literature that it was d or e as I can't see b/c working up literature (which would prove they were posing as Union employees and possible leave them open to having commited a crime/fraud)) and I also don't beleive that a applies in this or other cases I read from actual NHS workers earlier this year.

But hopefully, eventually Bigsmak or others will copy the literarure for us, or tape the converstaion (although w/o consent is this legal?).

BobQ

lvader wrote: »

An employment lawyer is likely to be more effective in these cases than a chubby uneducated union rep.

Your comment demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of unions. The "chubby, uneducated" rep you denigrate does not purport to be an employment lawyer but can seek advice from those with such expertise.

Do you consult a consumer lawyer everytime you have a consumer problem?

jem16

Thicko2 wrote: »

The sticking point is the extra contributions over the next 3 years. They cannot see these supporting schemes and bolstering them, e.g. in LGPS they will just cut grant funding to councils pro rata and in NHS they will just take the additional yearly surplus from the scheme back to the treasury. Movement here and in my view an agreement will be reached. Maybe at a point when public sector workers begin to recieve some cost of living increases.

I think this is the biggest point.

I fully accept that contributions have to rise. For the 34 years that I have been a member of the Teachers' Scheme, I can't remember pension contributions being less than 5%.

However the increases are coming at a time when, for most, pay has been frozen yet everything else is increasing.