Jetdriver,
I think you are wearing the wrong type of shades on the beach.
Your post on the whole is pretty much correct , except your perception of the level of disquiet.Rose tints are definately not your colour. I wouldn't wish to launder our dirty smalls in such a public domain but I do believe a balanced view be provided to potential new joiners.
Active members of the Final Salary Pension scheme are being shafted. The scheme, like many, has a massive deficit, well it did at the last tri-anual valuation in June 2004. As jetdriver pointed out this is nothing unusual and the Company have admirably accepted responsibility for this deficit with a plan to erradicate it over a 15 year period. However, now for the shafting, the Company are now saying that they are no longer prepared to fund future benefits to the same level as we have enjoyed in the past. Ultimately, to maintain current accrual rates, individuals are being told that their contribution level will have to increase by 4.66% of salary, bringing the level of individual contribution to a whopping 14.66% and the Company are going to contribute a little less than this (13.something%). Where is the shafting some might ask, well in the past we enjoyed a contribution ratio of 2:1, ie the Company payed twice the rate of individual contribution. Based on this, bearing in mind that this is using current (sensible) investment returns and up to date longivety statistics for future accrual, we should only need to contribute approx 9.5%.
This is not the only change to the scheme for future accrual. The level of inflation protection has been changed from a sensible cap of 5% to a cap of 2.5%. A big difference if there are any periods of inflation greater than 2.5% once one starts to draw ones pension.
These major changes were introduced with out any discussion or negotiation with the Members of the scheme.
It doesn't affect the new joiners directly as the scheme has been closed to new members since 2003. They all received their shafting before they joined last year when the Company changed the Contract for new joiners, with far inferior terms and conditions. Having said that they can't have been that bad as 70+ pilots joined last year and many more are applying for this winter.
The pension issue is far from resolved, I just hope that the Company have the sense to negotiate before the disquiet boils over to something unsavory.