I wish I had been wrong about this, but I have to point out that you read it here last year. The union side objectives in the dispute over the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) appear in danger of shrinking before our eyes.
Expect any day now to start hearing from some in our Union that if we could only get protection of pension rights extended from those who will be 60 by 2016 to include all those who will be 60 by 2020 then that would be great.
You know what? It wouldn’t. If we accept that we will badly let down our members who took strike action in March.
The Government may be about to back off from an attack upon redundancy rights which the employers had never requested. But that is no reason for us to accept a worse deal on protection of pension rights than that which was offered to all other public service pension schemes!
I was unimpressed when the Service Group Executives agreed not to go ahead with a strike ballot last month. I am even less impressed by the continuing delay agreed last week.
Delay and timidity is justified as ever by a process of “consultation” intended to enable members to reflect back at the leadership the feelings of uncertainty which have been engendered by the doubtful tactics which have been the hallmark of the dispute to date.
The Special Conference on 6 March may be our last chance to take this dispute back for our members. The deadline for Emergency Motions is first thing on 28 February and the Service Group Executive meets on 27 February so if anyone in local government has a Branch Committee meeting on the evening of 27 February then please get in touch!
Jon
ReplyDeleteAs an Amicus member i rely on your blog for LGPS info - Unison seem to be much more advanced on this than Amicus. Good Work.
But the 'protection' issue 2016 or 2020 is only a minor issue - the argument ishoudl be getting rid of all the dozens of 'employer discretions'. We need to replace in the LGPS the right of the employer to give us Members, discretionary payments, for the Members to have the right to payments!
These discretions areeverywhere in the LGPS - I have no idea why. The latest is to allow the employers discretion to guarantee (not aword you see very often inthe LGPS!) "up to" 10 years payment [after death, to the widow]. This great increase shoudl not be up to, but a streight right to a 10 year guarantee for all Members.
The issue is to abolish employer discretions with rights.
Yet this has not been realised by the unions.
Why?
Oops. Should read "The issue is to abolish employer discretions and replace them with with rights for Members".
ReplyDelete"As an Amicus member i rely on your blog for LGPS info - Unison seem to be much more advanced on this than Amicus."
ReplyDeleteI'm a GMB member and ditto!