Barnardo's Pension Betrayal

Some things do make you simply despair. Today I learnt that the Charity Barnardo's has announced that it will be closing its defined benefit pension scheme for it's staff without consultation.

Of course it is now back tracking rapidly since UNISON has reminded it that it is legally obliged to consult with its staff before making such a decision.

But how on earth have we come to this place that a previously respected national charity is not only depriving its staff of a decent pension scheme but is planning for them to retire and die in miserable poverty?

Let us get certain things straight from the beginning. Firstly, Barnardo's do not have to close their career average defined pension scheme. It will not get rid of any pension fund deficit since that will remain and now become far more expensive to service. It will arguably make the existing deficit worse and without doubt, cost Barnardo's more money to close it rather than keep it open.

So why on earth are they wasting charitable and public money on closing their scheme?

Not only that but even the Government has accepted that the way pensions schemes traditionally calculate the cost of their pensions is completely nonsense due to outdated and ridiculous accounting measures. The Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, has promised to change this and there is currently an on going enquiry into this matter which some commentators believe could reduce the size of pension fund deficits by 40%?

What is also particularly sickening is that Barnardo's is proposing to offer its staff being kicked out of its existing pension scheme, the poverty pension plan currently offered to new staff members. It will only offer 4% or 6% matched employer pension contributions, which are wholly inadequate and will mean that many of their staff, particularly the low paid will retire and die in poverty.

Is this what they really want? What does the Charities trustees think of this?

If you check the accounts there are 8,366 Barnardo staff who earn less than 59,999 per year. The overwhelming majority of course are on much less than £59k. There are 35 staff who earn £60k - 159k per year, who no doubt earn so much, they will be able to properly fund their pension schemes.

The top earners are the ones who made the decision to close the traditional scheme.

This is all just wrong and totally unnecessary. Barnardo's should be engaged in genuine and meaningful negotiations with UNISON over these issues.

If they don't then, it will just further damage and even help destroy their reputation. 

UNISON Local Government Conference Sunday 14 June

First full day of LG conference. Forced myself to get up early but soon feeling very smug as I went for a run along the Brighton beach about 7.15am. Lovely glorious warm sunshine. There were still many revellers from the “night before” wandering around. Mostly drinking coffee although I saw one hardy soul still swigging enthusiastically from a bottle of wine.

On the beach itself it is hard going to run due to the pebbles and there was a number of revellers who were fast asleep on the beach surrounded by beer cans while others with metal detectors sweep around their corpses.

There was people swimming next to the Pier while everwhere Brighton Council workers (hopefully UNISON members) were clearing up the beaches and streets.

Our morning branch delegation meeting over breakfast didn't quite work out to plan but we all met up at 9.10 to walk down to the conference centre were we had a team photo outside (see pic). All the other 3 delegates from my branch were here for the first time and were quite rightly asking me loads of questions.

The morning session went okay. There was a bit of a row over the standing orders report. Then after the Local Government Service Group Executive report, there was a another report on “Community and Voluntary Sector (CSV) forum” followed by the first item of business which was about funding in the Community and Voluntary Sector (CVS).

This should have gone ahead without any nonsense but my old branch in fact had I'm afraid put in a crass and pretty badly written amendment which upset many delegates in the CVS. It reaffirmed conference policy to oppose transfer of public services which was fair enough but had at the end “we do not believe that the private or voluntary sector can deliver welfare provision better than the public sector”. Which rattled my cage somewhat. Bob Woods from Barnardo's branch tore into this while I also spoke about being a treated as a “second class” unison member. I'll post what I said later. The rest of the morning business went quite smoothly.