Local Government Workers Find Their Pension Pot Pissed In (as well as their boots)
It's no wonder 1.5 million Britons could be on strike today after their pension deals are threatened with being written off by a combination of Labour cowardness and Conservative fraud.
So why is the local authority pension pot not big enough to guarantee workers, many in manual, low paid jobs, a small pension (for the mostly part-time women the average is about £1700, for men £5,500) from the age of 60?
Why are local government workers now being asked to work until 65?
Have a guess, is it..
* The fact that 9/11 wiped millions off pension funds? Nope.
* The fact that the pension funds have an ageing workforce that it can't afford to pay when it retires? Nope.
* The fact that profits in the future are unlikely to be enough to pay pensions? Nope.
* That new workers are being offered the retire-at-60 deal? Nope. They're not.
Some council pension funds, like Manchester, can afford to pay the retire-at-60 deal because they have plenty of money in their fund. So what's the problem?
The reason that pensions are underfunded as a whole is that in the 1980s some councils, especially Conservative ones in London and the South East, didn't pay a penny towards their funds for years.
A rule brought in by Thatcher meant they could use predictions of future profits to withhold payments, and then use what should have been going into the fundm to keep down the poll tax. I know, because I was a journalist in Croydon reporting about the council doing the very thing in the mid 1980s..
One council made no payment into its pension fund for 14 years. That added up to a decade of gains through the 90s that would have given the funds a surplus capable of withstanding a knock like 9/11.
Yet now, once again, flies undone, weather forecast in hand, these very same councils are telling those workers they have to work another five years for the benefits they signed up for.
So though it's unlikely E.R.'s dustbins will be collected in their usual Tuesday round today, but with all that piss in the dustmen's boots, it's hardly surprising.
So why is the local authority pension pot not big enough to guarantee workers, many in manual, low paid jobs, a small pension (for the mostly part-time women the average is about £1700, for men £5,500) from the age of 60?
Why are local government workers now being asked to work until 65?
Have a guess, is it..
* The fact that 9/11 wiped millions off pension funds? Nope.
* The fact that the pension funds have an ageing workforce that it can't afford to pay when it retires? Nope.
* The fact that profits in the future are unlikely to be enough to pay pensions? Nope.
* That new workers are being offered the retire-at-60 deal? Nope. They're not.
Some council pension funds, like Manchester, can afford to pay the retire-at-60 deal because they have plenty of money in their fund. So what's the problem?
The reason that pensions are underfunded as a whole is that in the 1980s some councils, especially Conservative ones in London and the South East, didn't pay a penny towards their funds for years.
A rule brought in by Thatcher meant they could use predictions of future profits to withhold payments, and then use what should have been going into the fundm to keep down the poll tax. I know, because I was a journalist in Croydon reporting about the council doing the very thing in the mid 1980s..
One council made no payment into its pension fund for 14 years. That added up to a decade of gains through the 90s that would have given the funds a surplus capable of withstanding a knock like 9/11.
Yet now, once again, flies undone, weather forecast in hand, these very same councils are telling those workers they have to work another five years for the benefits they signed up for.
So though it's unlikely E.R.'s dustbins will be collected in their usual Tuesday round today, but with all that piss in the dustmen's boots, it's hardly surprising.
posted by ENGLISH RANTER at Tuesday, March 28, 2006
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