01st August 2010
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This month
Top stories
- Jobless rise, redundancies still high and flexibility continues
- Private sector pensions withdraw throws public sector costs into the light
- 13.5m working days lost through stress
- Godless coppers free to dance naked around the fire
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Private sector pensions withdraw throws public sector costs into the light
The Trades Union Unite announced a ballot of members at Barclays over the company’s proposal to close their final salary pension scheme. Barclays is going further than most to deal with their estimated £2.2 billion deficit but BP and Morrisons have also recently announced changes to their own defined benefit schemes in the face of escalating employer costs.
Meanwhile a report from Policy Exchange, a right leaning think tank, shows the cost of unfunded public sector pension liabilities at £1.1 trillion or 78% of GDP and higher even than the much discussed public debt. With only 20% of the UK workforce in public sector employment, members of defined benefit schemes in public employment outnumbered their private sector colleagues even before the worst of the current downturn – 5.2m members compared to 2.7m.
