Public Sector Pensions

More nonsense yesterday from the Institute of Directors on public sector pensions.

Masquerading as an 'independent report' they produced an outrageously selective analysis of the state of public sector pensions. As a pensions negotiator, if I had taken the years when the schemes were in surplus and employers paid nothing in contributions as my starting point, then I would rightly be ridiculed. That is precisely what they are doing. In fact the schemes have all been recently renegotiated and have new cost sharing mechanisms in place to deal with future costs.

The real agenda is the bosses embarrassment at cutting their own workers schemes whilst paying themselves ever higher pensions. They even have the nerve to propose cutting benefits to 80ths, when their own schemes often have 30ths or 40ths. The IoD members have the real 'gold plated' pension schemes with their members in the top companies typically picking up £247,000 p.a. pensions, compared with the average of £4000 p.a. in local government.

Our full response and a detailed explanation of public sector pensions is on our website.