Strike threat over pensions cutback

UNION leaders threatened a wave of strikes by workers fighting to protect traditional pensions as firms switch to cheaper schemes. They warned that the growing crisis is poised to become the biggest cause of industrial unrest as employees 'see their retirement dreams shattered'.

TUC general secretary John Monks claimed workers were ready to 'rise up against the biggest threat to their pay and conditions since the Second World War'.

And he backed those taking action to save their final-salary scheme pensions. Monks said: 'Some people like to divide the unions into moderates and militants. We are all militants when it comes to defending and advancing pension rights. Even decent employers have betrayed decades of trust as they give in to City pressure to scrap quality pensions. Corporate Britain, with some notable exceptions, should be hanging its head in shame.'

Union leaders accuse bosses of using the stock market slump - which firms claim has added to the costs of running generous pensions - as a cynical excuse to close final-salary schemes. They say the recent turmoil is a 'short-term blip' after years of soaring shares and are angry that business took an £18bn contribution holiday during the 1990s boom.

John Edmonds, general secretary of the GMB union, said: 'Employers must realise they are drinking in the last chance saloon.'

Unions want employers and employees to be compelled to contribute to a pension, with companies picking up most of the bill. But business leaders said firms were being forced to re-examine final-salary schemes because of 'spiralling' costs.

Steel giant Caparo, owned by Labour peer and donor Lord Paul, recently became the first company to be hit by strikes over pensions. A growing list of companies - including Lloyds TSB, BT, Sainsbury's, ICI and Whitbread - have decided to close final-salary schemes to new recruits.

Research for the Confederation of British Industry showed that 24% of firms have shut the schemes to new entrants in the past five years. Employthement Relations Minister Alan Johnson, a former general secretary of the Communication Workers Union, criticised some Left-wing wingers who have won recent union elections and are now stirring up strike action.

'They are said to be new radical trade union leaders and then they are associated with views that are very old and conservative and a back-to-the-Seventies approach,' he said in an interview with The Times. 'There is not a cat in hell's chance of going back to that. The sight of pickets around braziers, as John Monks said recently, does no good for the trade union movement.'

His remarks came as Britain's second largest union was preparing to tear up ' no strike' deals at some of the biggest companies. The new boss of Amicus, former communist Derek Simpson pledged to campaign so hard against the Prime Minister and for workers' rights on a par with other nations in Europe that he would give Tony Blair a 'f****** migraine'.

Savings staff next in line

COMPANIES that take over public sector work are altering the pensions of staff who would have been employed by the Government. New workers at National Savings & Investments departments in Blackpool, Durham and Glasgow and at the Passport Office are the latest group whose final-salary scheme is to go.

The scheme for 2,500 backroom staff at Siemens, which runs the administrative side of National Savings, is loaded against the low paid, say unions.