Are employees fighting for their final salary pension schemes?
With speculation that Barclays bank is set to increase the incentives on offer regarding the potential closure of the company's final salary pension scheme, there is a feeling that employees and their unions, are starting to fight back against the closure of final salary schemes across the UK. This area of the pension industry has been a bone of contention for some time with many companies struggling with significant pension fund deficit, often in the billions of pounds for the large UK companies, and looking to reduce their ongoing liabilities.
Barclays bank is just one of a host of large UK companies trying to close down their final salary pension scheme by offering large incentives for existing members to move to money purchase schemes. There was a feeling that the bank was looking to push through this move without prior consultation with the unions and employees although over the last few days the stance of the company has softened somewhat.
Quite what pension fund members can do to protect their final salary schemes into the future remains to be seen because you need to balance up the benefits for members and the ability of the underlying companies to fulfil their funding obligations. Do you take a chance and push a company to continue with the final salary scheme only to find it is underfunded and members suffer in due course, or do you take the incentives on offer and look towards a money purchase arrangement?
Employees are fighting back but ultimately it may well be out of their control!
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