TUC pensions conference: “Weathering the Economic Storm”

Live post from Congress House. Pension conferences are a bit like London buses (under Boris). Yesterday I was at the Dutch TUC over pensions and today I am with some of the same UNISON colleagues at the British TUC over similar issues.

The TUC conference is the major pension event of the year for trade union trustees and representatives. There was some direct linkage. TUC General Secretary Brendon Barber mentioned in his keynote speech about poor corporate governance being a major cause of the current financial crisis. So in the Q&A after new Pensions minister Angela Eagle spoke - I put my hand up. My question was to ask the minister to support the long standing trade union policy of having really independent directors sitting on company boards. Particularly in financial services - appointed by pension funds who could bring to Boards the "common sense" trustee approach to stop companies taking excessive risk and paying excessive executive pay.

Angela gave a guarded but interesting reply. She supported the idea of “independent and fearless” voices on Boards who would ask the awkward questions and stand up to experts. She mentioned that the Chancellor is concerned about this issue. She then asked Brendan to respond further. Brendan took the opportunity to gently point out that the Government had recently missed an important trick over this issue by not appointing any truly independent people to run the UKFI which looks after government share holdings in the nationalised Banks. “Bankers to run Bankers” who recently approved the massive pay package for the new CEO of RBS. Governance is key and the government needs to give a new lead.

I think that the unions need to push this issue hard, also the Labour Party needs to dust off industrial democracy policies and think afresh. Better regulation is not enough, independent shareholder directors appointed by owners are desperately needed to see off the next financial crisis. Tinkering around the edges is not going to work and this is politically more clear red water between Labour and the Tories.