NATS Pensions (Split from Pay 2009 thread)

[Radarspod]

If we vote yes, it all goes through, the SMART pension and the cap on Pensionable earnings of RPI+0.5% for 15 years. . We will may be sold to the highest bidder in 2010 - NATS is a company, not a service provider - company's get bought and sold all the time. Or NATS may not. It may get together with another entity (DFS would be a good one) and use SESAR as a platform to take on more of European airspace. That would be a good thing in my view!

If we vote no they can push it through OR come back to us and renegotiate OR they can withdraw the reasonable offer and replace with a less reasonable one You could have something to lose by voting no.

It isn't simple! 1184 posts on this thread shows that!

RS

[Vote NO]

OR they can withdraw the reasonable offer and replace with a less reasonable one You could have something to lose by voting no.

Highly unlikey or wise I would have thought, but what do I know

[Radarspod]

agreed not likely or wise, but could happen.

[Vote NO]

I guess it's a gamble, but you have to take a chance some times in life, nothing ventured-nothing gained

I think the odds are on our side

[barstewards]

Eglnyt said:

There is no big pot of money secreted away.

Maybe no big pot of money secreted away however:

• £66 million profit,

• £10's of millions of shareholder loans paid off 24 years EARLY, (£80 million?)

• £15 million in early redemption penalties of said loans,

• The rest of the shareholder loans refinanced at a lower interest rate, therefore saving millions in interest every year from now on (£5.5 million this year)

• £23 million spent on one off costs closing and relocating staff from WD to Swanwick,

• £millions given as 'bungs' to staff to buy out redundancy T+C's.
• £millions to be paid out in dividends to shareholders (if TAG bought into NATS at 'not for commercial gain' then why are they taking dividends??

Does this sound like a company that cannot find (up to a maximum of) £60 million to fund it's staff pension?



Is it fair or even moral that a company takes payment holidays and pays less than the underlying rate then turns round and asks it's staff to agree to losing £hundreds per month in their retirement?

• Management like to tell us how well the company is doing - A* credit rating, new contracts etc.

• How much have they spent on management trips away that can be done in-house or using video conferencing?

• How much is spent on awards ceremonies to reward staff for doing their job? I safely move aircraft around the sky and receive money in the bank each month - that is a good enough reward for doing a job properly.

NATS needs to get it's own housekeeping in order and curb excessive spending before considering any pension changes.




A happy workforce is a productive one. NATS cannot survive without a happy, loyal workforce.

A FINAL SALARY PENSION* = loyal workforce


* Pension based on actual "Final salary" not some notional salary cr@p

[Not Long Now]

Fair and moral don't come into it. Pensions legislation requiring the scheme to be funded to 100%, not 100% plus a bit for good luck in case of a rainy day does come into it.

[eglnyt]

Does this sound like a company that cannot find (up to a maximum of) £60 million to fund it's staff pension?

Over the next few months you're going to find out that there are a lot of things the company can't fund if the current rumours on winter traffic levels are correct.

[barstewards]

Pensions legislation requiring the scheme to be funded to 100%

It is time for NATS to dig deep and cough up then - a company that can affort to pay of significant amount of debt 24 years early and cover tens of millions of pounds of early repayment charges can affort to pay for my FINAL SALARY PENSION

Over the next few months you're going to find out that there are a lot of things the company can't fund if the current rumours on winter traffic levels are correct.

So are you expecting me to vote away £hundreds per month of my future pension based on this winters traffic levels? What about in 2012, 2025 or even 2038 (I will still be working then...) when we look back at 2008 and laugh about how quiet it was back then.

Just a shame that I will still be working my off paying for a reduced pension because we were worried about the quiet winter of 2008/9... . ...

[ZOOKER]

The people looking after your pensions are called 'TRUSTEES'.
Ask yourselves this...
Do you TRUST them?

[45 before POL]

Another point ...Nats just deferred shareholder dividends till March 2009.....is this a case of pleading poverty in the run up to the pension vote..hmmm

[Mr A Tis]

barsteward..you missed out the alleged £120M compensation NATS paid out over the SATCA fiasco over in Madrid...........

[eglnyt]

It is time for NATS to dig deep and cough up then

The company has already told you it can't, the NTUS have checked the figures and say they are right. Why do you think they can ?

[barstewards]

Add these figures together - can you find (a maximum) of £60 million there?

£66 million
£80 million
£15 million
£5.5 million this year
£23 million

I can


This does not take into account the money sp*nked off on awards ceremonies etc or the reported £120 million compensation to the Spanish......


A company that can pay off large parts of loans 24 YEARS EARLY is not in any position to plead poverty to it's loyal, hardworking workforce.

Whatever happens to traffic for the next year or so is a small setback - cyclical events.

A year or two later traffic will be busier than it was this summer - when that happens I will be very off when 'pulse' magazine tells me that NATS made £xxx million but my pension has been reduced.......

[mr.777]

The company has already told you it can't, the NTUS have checked the figures and say they are right. Why do you think they can ?

Because unlike you, we dont believe every damn thing we are told.

[hold at SATAN]

The company has already told you it can't, the NTUS have checked the figures and say they are right. Why do you think they can ?

Erm...NATS may not have the money in it's account NOW, but there is the small matter of the tens of millions in revenue over the next year and the savings in NOT having to pay interest on loans, exit charges to the spanish, moving of West Drayton etc. You know, the usual day to day costs. I doubt the trustees will say:

Dear NATS,

the fund is £60m short, please pay us £60m by the end of next week.

Lots of love,

The Trustees

PS: Nice cars!

They will come up with a repayment plan in order to bring the scheme up to correct levels.

[Asda]

LOA, after some digging, I owe you a sort of apology, there is a difference between pre and post PPP members. But the confusion comes from the term 'enforced transfer of employment'.

The scheme is protected and all members have that protection, pre or post PPP. There can be no 'decrement' to our pensions and this applies in the eventuality that NATS is sold on, to a new owner or owners. Whilst this happened we would all continue to be employed by NATS.

However, in the event of NATS actually going bankrupt and being placed into administration, which is a much more serious situation, the Trust of a Promise, will only apply to pre PPP members. In that case, post PPP members would have not have the same pension protections described in the Trust of Promise. By being placed into administration we would be subject to an 'enforced transfer of employment', that is to say NATS would no longer exist and we would be working not for NATS, but for 'Network Air' or 'Stagecoach', whoever. And that, I believe,is the difference for members pre and post PPP.

Sorry for the confusion.

[anotherthing]

I am voting 'NO' for a few reasons, but one of which is I do not have any trust in the company or the fund managers.

We are being told that the cap makes NATS more financially stable because

The cap has an immediate effect because it allows the actuary to make different assumptions. Those different assumptions have a very big difference on the predicted liability which in turn reduces by some margin the underlying contribution rate.

I totally understand the fact that the pension fund legally does not need to be kept in surplus.

I totaly understand the business reasons why NATS would want to keep the surplus as low as possible (reduces costs to NATS).

What grips my sh!t is the talk of assumptions and predictions. This implies long term planning, whereby you plan for good times and bad times realising that in a given time span (shall we say 15 years) the fund will sometimes over-perform and sometimes under-perform.

What the quoted statement above claims is that with the pension cap, NATS and it's actuaries will be able to shave off a couple of percentage of it's contribution rate (thus making a business saving), whilst still ensuring the pot remains funded at 100%. i.e. it will be able to do this without having to go to extremes and having too huge a surplus.

What the quoted statement does not take into consideration is the fact that NATS claimed several years ago that the contribution holiday and the reduced contributions would not affect the pension, yet seven years down the line, look where we are (that's only seven years, not even half the time NATS want to tie us into this supposed new fix).

In other words, NATS was unable or unwilling to keep a sufficient enough surplus to overcome the current problems.

What the 'YES' men want you to believe is that this situation was unpredictable when NATS took the break and the reduced rates... so why should we now believe them when they say that the proposed measures mean that they can keep the pension correctly funded, whilst not having to pay in too much?

The pension fund does not need to be funded at more than 100%, however it's basic common sense that you keep a bit aside for a rainy day, which NATS have failed to do. Allowing for contingency is the basic premise of any financial planning, be that in renovating houses, ensuring you have enough money to cover emergencies etc or in any other financial venture.

Any half-wit knows that if you only budget to pay for 100% of possible costs, something will come along to make those costs higher.

Only a complete bunch of half-wits would allow that to happen.

So the million dollar question is, are our finance people half-witted, or was the funding level done deliberately because it was known that it would make the pension scheme look dodgy at some point in the future, thus paving the way to restructure it, thus paving the way for breaking up and selling NATS?

Either way, can we trust our financial 'experts' (who up until recently 'hadn't heard' of SMART pensions ) - because one way or another they are either incompetent and/or underhand.

[eglnyt]

Asda

Not quite right I'm afraid. The scheme is protected through the protection to the Trust Deed afforded by the Transport Act and that protection applies to all members whenever they joined so they can't reduce the benefits of anybody who is already a member.

The Trust of Promise stops them forcing anybody out of the scheme. That only applies to those who were in the scheme in July 2001. The continuation of the Trust of Promise must be a condition if NATS is sold in the normal way so that protection would continue if NATS is sold but, very importantly, the Trust of Promise does not apply if NATS goes bust. Currently post PPP members have some rights to continuation in the scheme afforded by TUPE and other legislation which protects your terms and conditions but not as much as pre PPP members. If NATS goes bust we all have the same legal protection. The Memorandum of Understanding will probably give post PPP members a bit more protection than they currently have but as nobody has actually seen this proposed document we can't know for sure.

[eglnyt]

barstewards

You are still confusing profit with spare cash. The regulator has allowed NATS to make that profit only to fund the investment programme. If you work in NERL in the South you are sitting in front of that profit everytime you go to work, if you work in Scotland you have to look across the car park to see it. If that profit is not invested the regulator will quickly step in and either make NATS invest it or reduce charges by that amount. Those sums of money can not be used to fund your pension or any other normal running cost.

Did NATS pay off the shareholder loans with cash ? If you read the NERL accounts as well as the NATS ones I think you'll find that it's really re-financed that loan. That's good business sense, why pay 12.5% when most of your borrowing is between 5 and 8%, but the company is not significantly richer as a result. Why the emphasis on "EARLY" ? My credit card balance doesn't have to be paid off every month but I'd be stupid if I left the balance there when I could pay it off.

£120 million is a lot of money and it seems to me that it would be very hard to hide that amount in the accounts but I haven't been able to find it, perhaps you can.

You may be able to find the money year on year to fund the pension at 40% underlying rate but unless the regulator agrees to pass through those costs I can't and neither could the experts that NTUS consulted.

[BDiONU]

eglnyt Excellent post #1203 I've alluded to the same in earlier posts but I have to temper my posts as I'm viewed as a kiss ass management lackey by some contributors, so not worth my posting.

I'd be interested to know if any of the operational staff were aware that the company is £50million short in funding in CP2? Thats forecast and committed investment spend against actual revenue coming in. Expect project cancellations & shelving.

A word on celebrating success parties etc. All gone, there is no money. Nowadays in the company the reward for doing a good job is no punishment

BD