Defend Pension Rights

THE FUTURE of our pensions is one of the most worrying questions for workers in Britain. People are living longer and both government and private employers want to shift the cost on to working-class people's backs.

Roger Shrives

People worry - when they grow old will they face a future of poverty? We haven't seen such an onslaught on pension rights since before the second world war.

Pensions are in reality deferred wages. In the last decade over two million workers lost their rights to a decent occupational pension. Private-sector bosses robbed their workers of nearly Ł19 billion from their pensions between 1987 and 2001 by taking a contributions 'holiday' while stock prices were high.

After stocks and shares dipped, bosses saved another Ł4,000 per worker per year by abolishing final salary schemes and increased their profits by another Ł4 billion through cutting their own contributions.

Strikes have already taken place in some private sector workplaces when workers found that the pensions they expected were under threat. Now's the time for a united TUC-led campaign against the threat to pension rights in both private and public sectors.

The Socialist Party says

No to 'work till you drop'!
Restore the link between pensions and wages!
Give back all that has been taken away to those who paid in to final salary schemes.
Restore to the private sector pension funds all the money that the bosses robbed from them.
Unite the fight for a decent pension.
For a one-day public sector strike in defence of pension rights and against low pay and attacks on jobs.

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In The Socialist 13 November 2004:

Withdraw The Troops