Moving a Royal Mail pension

hyubh

quotememiserable wrote: »

Really, its easy. Most of the unions have been telling their members they will 'lose their pension' 'halve their pension' and all sorts of rhetoric that's simply untrue. Either they do this to whip up anger and keep themselves important, or else they just don't understand the issues. Either way, inexcusible.

It's only because of union power that the public sector still has decent pensions! The typical employee in a DB scheme - not least amongst 'professionals' - has no clue about how valuable their pension membership actually is. Pretty much any private contractor with TUPE'd staff in a public sector scheme would be pushing at an open door if they were able to openly dangle something like a trivial payrise in return for opting out of the pension scheme.

quotememiserable

hyubh wrote: »

For a person in the old police or old firefighter scheme and who doesn't come under the transitional protections, it is not 'simply untrue' at all. Does that mean closing those schemes is wrong? In my view no, however I don't blame the unions/employee organisations involved when they kick up a fuss - that's what they are supposed to be doing, standing up for their members.

The schemes aren't being closed though, are they. And all the earned pension remains earned at exactly the value it had before. This latter point is never made clear by union publicity, and often its wrongly stated that earned pension is affected.

hyubh

quotememiserable wrote: »

The schemes aren't being closed though, are they.

Argh, yes they are. You don't actually know what I mean when I refer to the 'old' police and fire schemes, do you? Either Google, or find the exchange I had with a police officer on this very board not so long ago...

And all the earned pension remains earned at exactly the value it had before. This latter point is never made clear by union publicity, and often its wrongly stated that earned pension is affected.

Um, the old police and fire schemes have a special feature that you aren't taking account of. It's the main reason why the 'new' (i.e., 2006) police and fire schemes are a lot lot cheaper...