The national ballot has started. It runs until the 1st December. Check your email box (or the post if you are in Northern Ireland), vote and vote Yes/Yes. We are fighting to improve pay, protect jobs, improve conditions and to sort out the debacle facing our pensions scheme, where thousands of our members – past and present – continue to suffer because of capita incompetence, neglect because of the government’s privatisation programme and their continued refusal to bring the administration back in house which could solve the whole question.
This article explains what we want on pensions and why it is vital to vote Yes/Yes.
Why Pensions are Part of the National Ballot
The CAPITA disaster that has devastated the lives of thousands of retiring Civil Service workers is justification alone for Pensions to be central to our dispute with the Government.
After decades of deductions from your salary, a promise that the day after you retire you will receive the benefits that you signed up for, getting ready to stop work and then the threat of no income. And you receive nothing! No lump sum payment, earmarked to pay off debts and no income for months.
Bereaved partners and children left not knowing when they will get death benefits, working members delaying retirement after they’ve worked for decades, members suffering hardship because payments not processed on time, life changing decisions put off and Capita staff (also our members) put under undue and increasing stress and pressure by incompetence way outside their control.
PCS has exposed these impacts and put pressure on MPs and the Government to end the misery and remove the contract from Capita and bring it back into the Civil Service. But while Ministers talk, our members and their families suffer. Whilst Ministers quote ‘barriers’ and ‘long timelines’, our members and their families still suffer. And now even more delays. That’s not good enough!
When the Royal Mail Legacy scheme was in danger of collapse it was announced that it would be brought back in House.
We demand the same! We can wait no longer. Too much talking, too little action. We have no choice but to ballot for action.
We Pay Too Much for A Pension We Can’t Get!
As if that wasn’t enough, the 2019 statutory revaluation of the Civil Service Pension schemes, established that we pay 2% more per month in pension contributions than we should be. Our contributions should be reduced by 2% and the overpayments given back to us.
The Government refuse.
That’s Not Good Enough! We Demand the Reduction of Our Contributions We are Owed!
McCloud Options Delayed…..again
The Tory/Lib Dem Coalition attacked Public Sector pensions as part of the austerity they unleashed in 2011. PCS with others resisted including organising a mass strike of 2 million Public Sector workers on the 30 November 2011. However, Right Wing TU leaders sold out to the Government and in 2014/15 wholesale worsening of Public Sector pensions was put into law. That resulted in the minimum retirement age being linked to the State Retirement pension age which is now 68.
Several Unions successfully challenged this, and the Government was forced to offer workers who had been working in 2012 and still working, options including the restoration of their pension entitlement. Capita are responsible for handling the options exercise!
They have been given an extended time to carry out the work. And another extended time…. and another extended time – but it’s still not resolved and now even more delays. Thousands of us have still not been sent our options let alone received money we are entitled to.
That’s Not Good Enough! We Demand People are Given Their Options Now!
Low Pay Means a Low Pension
The main driver of our dispute is years and years of declining value of our wages. Years of low pay means a low pension. That means for many workers the State Pension, that we are also paying for via National Insurance, is an essential component of retirement income.
Burnham Attacks the Triple Lock
You are already having to wait longer to qualify for your State Pension and now the new Labour Prime Minister, Andy Burnham has announced that the mechanism the Government uses to value the annual increase of the pension, the so-called Triple Lock (either the average rise in prices, wages or 2.5%) is to be scrapped with regard to wages.
The Triple Lock was introduced by the Tory/Lib Dem Coalition under David Cameron to reverse the impoverishment of pensioners by the decision of another Tory Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who broke the link to earnings in 1980 which had seen the pension’s value fall from 26% to 16% of average earnings.
A Repeat of the Starmer Attack on Pensioners
Virtually the first thing the Starmer government did upon being elected in 2024 was to announce the intention to means test the Winter Fuel Allowance paid to pensioners. That led to a sustained campaign to pressurise Labour to reverse that decision which was ultimately successful in the teeth of the catastrophic fall of support for Labour.
Burnham was elected on a platform which repudiated Starmer but also claimed that he wanted to break with 40 years of neoliberal policies like the attack on the Winter Fuel Allowance.
Oppose Divide and Rule Tactics
As Sharon Graham, newly re-elected General Secretary of UNITE said immediately following Burnham’s announcement, ‘instead of picking the pockets of pensioners who are not the super-rich, in fact are some of the worst paid pensioners in the G7’ richest nations, ‘the government should fund social care by introducing wealth taxes.”
Instead, Burnham proposes to take an estimated £15 billion off 13.1 million pensioners, 8.2 million of which are still on the basic pension of £9,615 not the £12,548 quoted in the media.
PCS must unite with other unions in opposing this attack. This mess affects all our members and needs to be urgently resolved.
Vote Yes and Yes in the Ballot
Spread the word to get the vote out in the ballot and if you are interested in getting more involved in building up a fighting, campaigning union join with us in BLN.
