Just 10 years ago, 88 of the top 100 companies in the UK offered final
salary pensions. Today Shell is the last company in the FTSE 100 to
offer such a pension to its new employees.
Just 10 years ago, 88 of the top 100 companies in the UK offered final
salary pensions. Today Shell is the last company in the FTSE 100 to
offer such a pension to its new employees.
Now that poverty stricten
company has announced plans to close the scheme to new entrants from
2013. Having only made £7.2 billion profit in the third quarter of 2011,
and with the pension fund being valued in 2010 …at only £1.1 billion
in surplus, it is easy to see why the company just can’t keep providing
such outrageous benefits for its staff – though no doubt it will
continue to scrape together a few pounds for its directors. Clearly the
company’s 7,000 existing workers will get solid re-assurance that the
scheme will remain open to them. But these employees only have to look
to their colleagues in Unilever, who got just such assurances only to
have them withdrawn within a couple of years.
Such re-assurances are
worthless. With Unilever workers announcing a series of strikes to
defend their pensions, Shell workers need to immediately ballot for
similar action.
