Originally Posted by
parabellum
Turin - I can remember back in the late nineties I did a layover in Jo'burg, BA used the same hotel then, in Rosebank, I think. In the hotel at the same time as us was the first Hamble cadet to reach retirement age, (possibly 55?), if what we were told was true and not a wind up this Captain was retiring with 100K lump sum and an annual pension of around 80K. Does this mean that you are now going to have to make do with an annual pension of only 65K?
HA!
I am not a BA Captain, or FO for that matter.
I was expecting about 37K, I am now looking at about 22k after the closure.
No Aston Martin for me I'm afraid.
Jet II
So its up to the individual to make sure that they have enough saved for a pension, nobody else.
Yup, which is what I and about 17000 other NAPS active members thought they were doing.
APS was the Golden age and there were plenty of complaints about them from those on NAPS - now the same is happening all over again.
So why should those staff on BARP accept less good pay rises simply to fund NAPS? - I was in NAPS and even I could defend that.
I have never heard any NAPS employee complaining about APS members, partly because some NAPS people were voluntarily bought out of APS. However most current NAPS staff joined on NAPS and accepted the employment on that basis, same with BARP. Its not like people were forced to join BA was it?
I understand the argument that NAPS members wish to retain the benefits they were offered when they joined because there is a yawning chasm between the retirement income you can expect as a BARP member and a NAPS one. This doesn't alter the fact though that due to the demographic and financial environment changes explained above it is simply not economic nor arguably right for BA to continue to fund gigantic pension contributions to a gold plated elite at the expense of the majority of employees. The truth is BA is making lower profits, paying out lower profit share, is less able to invest in new fleet and product because of the crippling and open ended commitment to a financially unsustainable pension scheme.
What are you on about? Gold plated elite? I am not talking about pilots on 80k + per year salary. There are a hell of a lot of other employees on very modest wages. I read about one today who was expecting 18K on retirement and is now looking at only 12K with only 4 years to make up the shortfall. Impossible.
BA is making record profits. In excess of £1.3 Billion for each of the last two years. It has just brought in two new fleets of modern state of the art aircraft (A380 & B787), all while apparently being hamstrung by the pension obligations.