Unions team up over SBS pensions
BECTU is joining forces with the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) to defend pension rights for members in Siemens.
Both unions have called for immediate talks with the German company about a major review, announced today, of final-salary pension schemes operated by Siemens in the UK, including those covering members in Siemens Business Services (SBS).
Management have revealed that the company's various defined benefit pension schemes have a deficit of £638 million - a shortfall of 24% in the assets needed to meet obligations to pensioners and current staff who are in the schemes.
Plans to deal with the deficit are already in place, and Siemens is due to increase its contributions by more than £50 million a year for the next 10 years.
However, the unions believe that the company also wants to reduce the ongoing costs of pensions for existing staff, currently running at 25.3% of its payroll.
Since Siemens' UK final-salary schemes are already closed to new joiners - usually the first cost-cutting pensions move that companies make - the unions fear that the review is likely to propose cuts in future benefits as a means of reducing Siemens' costs.
Managers briefing union representatives emphasised that pension rights already earned by current staff would be honoured, but admitted that the review could mean changes in the benefits they accrue after January 2008, the target date for savings.
Siemens staff who are in the company's money-purchase pension schemes are unaffected by the review, and have been told explicitly that their entitlements will not change.
BECTU and PCS represent members working in Siemens Business Services, a UK subsidiary, most of whom previously worked either in the BBC or the civil service.
Plans are being made to link up with other unions whose members work for Siemens across a range of UK industries, including Amicus, GMB, and T&GWU.
All Siemens unions are expected to back a joint approach to the UK holding company which is ultimately in control of dozens of subsidiaries bearing the Siemens brand.
Management have already been asked to provide full financial information to union negotiators, and will be pressed to open talks about the pension situation immediately, instead of waiting until any changes have been signed off by pension trustees.
BECTU is also planning to confront the BBC, which transferred more than 1,100 staff into SBS in 2004 when Siemens bought BBC Technology Ltd, the Corporation's IT and broadcast engineering provider.
At the time of the sell-off, the union won a commitment from the BBC that Siemens would provide a final-salary pension scheme for Technology staff, and BECTU will be calling on the Corporation to insist that their expectations are honoured.
Tony Lennon, BECTU President said: "If this review leads to our Siemens members losing pension rights only two years after privatisation, the BBC will rightly be accused of selling all of them down the river. Many of them have transferred secure BBC pension pots into the Siemens scheme, and the BBC is honour-bound to look after them."
Some Siemens staff will escape any pension changes thanks to a binding commitment given by the government when they were tranferred out of civil service areas like National Savings and Investment. Danny Williamson, PCS Siemens Group President said: "We're still trying to work out who is affected, but the pension review is bad news for everyone and the unions will be standing firmly together in defence of our members' rights".
Any erosion of pension rights for the ex-BBC staff in Siemens will ring alarm bells in the many areas which have already been privatised, or face privatisation in the future.
These include engineering and technical departments who could, like 90 staff in BBC Scotland this summer, be TUPE-transferred to Siemens Business Services under the terms of the company's 10-year contract.
Concerns will also be raised among members in BBC Resources Ltd, a subsidiary threatened with privatisation in 2007, where staff have not even been told for certain that there will be a pension scheme to belong to after any sell-off.
Pension problems have already arisen in privatised BBC areas, and BECTU is locked in an argument with facilities provider Johnson Controls which refused to offer a final-salary pension scheme to almost 100 ex-BBC staff when it won the Corporation's premises contract this year.
Elsewhere in the industry, BECTU is in talks with ITN about possible changes to pension and redundancy rights, including an increase in retirement age, and is expecting ITV to open discussions on pensions in the near future.