NEWS FROM HEAD OFFICE
Health workers’ pensions are honoured
(18/10/05) UNISON has welcomed the deal on pensions for health workers, the civil service and teachers that guarantees lifetime protection for all current employees and their existing pension provision.
The union is now calling for the principles of the new deal to be applied to the local government pension scheme.
UNISON general secretary, Dave Prentis, said that the government had honoured its pensions contract with the nation's health workers.
“They will have lifetime protection of their existing pensions provision, including their retirement age,” he said.
He added that the union will now start talks to negotiate new schemes for new entrants which will be index linked defined benefit schemes, with no central direction over the type of scheme. There will also be provision in those new schemes for people to pay a more into the scheme over a lifetime of work to retire at 60 if they wish to do so.
But Prentis said that this deal was just one part of the jigsaw.
“We want the principles established here to be applied to the local government scheme,” he said.
“These principles have been endorsed by the Cabinet. It is important that the promise made to teachers, health workers and civil servants applies also to the more than 1.3 million local government workers.
"We are confident that the deputy prime minister will want to play fair by the local government workforce."
 More on UNISON’s Pensions campaign
(Updated 18 October 2005)
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