More talks scheduled on Ntl: pensions

A series of meetings has been set up to discuss staff pensions and other rights after communications company Ntl: is sold.

At the meetings, which are due to take place throughout January, BECTU hopes to finalise details of a final-salary staff pension scheme, which new owner Macquarrie Communications has promised will be "broadly equivalent" to Ntl's exising scheme.

Union negotiators are pressing Ntl: management to put right a pension deficit of more than £50m before the company's ownership passes to Macquarrie, to ensure that there is enough cash in the fund to guarantee that all current pension entitlements can be honoured.

Macquarrie are in the process of appointing a specialist pension consultant to help design a new scheme for Ntl: staff working in transmitters and related areas, whose pension entitlements date back to a period when they were employed by the now-defunct Independent Broadcasting Authority.

However members are concerned that the current Ntl: schemes will be frozen following the transfer of staff to Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group, and staff will become deferred members.

Ntl: has agreed to meet its "statutory obligations" in respect of the current scheme, which will leave members potentially out of pocket since their un-taken pensions will increase only in line with inflation, or 5% per year if that is lower than RPI, instead of matching growth in earnings.

One of the planned meetings, on January 20, will bring union representatives together with trustees of the current Ntl: pension scheme, while in separate talks with company management, BECTU will be trying to win guarantees that benefits linked to the pension scheme, like early retirement and redundancy, are retained after the transfer of ownership.

Union official David Beevers said, "BECTU's objective is to get Ntl: to make good the schemes current deficits out of the proceeds of the sale to facilitate a seemless like-for-like transfer of funds in to the new MCIG scheme.

"Ntl: owe this to their Broadcast staff who have made the business what it is today, worth the £1.27 billion price tag to be paid by Maquarrie."