Having been "modded" earlier in response to Fenellas 1st ever post I just am wondering where she gets the above idea that this will happen however I am in total agreement with this outcome :ok::E

Still a big fat No from me, who did go in with ears open and brain in gear to the Union Management Xmas Panto
"Oh yes I did"

Watch out those Mods are..........BEHIND YOU :)

They seem to be very active :suspect: lately on this thread :E

Some of us :O will have to speak in" tongues" to avoid having posts removed :p, a bit like on NATS intranet :ooh:

They certainly work faster than the BBC :E

:ok:
Maybe we can just use icons :E to communicate on here :}

Mind you I wouldnt mind Jonathan's salary,:) nearly as much as :E:E:E:E :E:E:E:E:E:E earns ;)

just found out you can only use 15 images in a post!!

If the mods are here is there any way we can have some polls set up on this site?
I know not very accurate but hey would be interesting non the less:ok:

yea, come on MODS give us a yes/no vote poll :O :E

We could always set up our own web site with a poll :ok:

Hope my "location" is not too offensive :oh:

If I get booted, I will return with a "girly" name and know I will be safe :)

I searched the site and nowhere was it suggesting that employees in their 20s and 30s should be looking at a 1/2 final salary scheme or much worse.

The Railway Pension Scheme isn't proposing to take potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds of deferred pay from employees.



Is this where the 'doomsday' scenario rears its discredited head again?

We've established now that the management line about losing pensions in the event of NATS going to the wall is far LESS likely than losing them under present proposals.




It's good to see that your example shows that NATS going back under HMG control will not result in employees losing their pensions.

And indeed your highlighting that an increase in contribution rates as an alternative is a creditable one rather than the hidden snatch of hundreds of thousands of pounds of employees money.




Absolutely, it's good to see clear proposals which may involve an increase of contributions without the scheme being reduced to 1/2 final salary or much worse.

Management and unions working together to avoid staff having hundreds of thousands of pounds of deferred pay being removed from their pension schemes.

Nice idea, especially if the voting could be further broken down to individual unions.

Vote Here
 

Come on MODS, give us a poll :ok:

We've established nothing of the sort, far from it. Just repeating speculation about what might happen does not make that outcome any more likely. We know the worse that can happen because that's enshrined in legislation, the Trust Deed and the Trust of Promise. Nobody knows what will actually happen.

Vote Here
http://snappoll.com/poll/301858.php

Its official we have a poll :ok: and you cannot vote repeatedly. :}

VOTE NO

nice one band4all

There's already a poll in the NATS private Forum. Any poll here would be open to anyone voting and so could be very very inaccurate.

What if the 200,000 odd daily viewers to PPRuNe all voted YES or NO ?? Would this give us an accurate picture of how NATS staff are actually going to vote ?? Nope, it wouldn't.

Again I am in agreement with you.

We know that in the event of NATS failing then our pension schemes assets are protected. Nobody will lose money from the scheme in this case unlike the impact of potentially losing hundreds of thousands of pounds from voting 'yes'.

I also agree that scaremongering speculation about loss of pensions if management don't secure themselves a 'yes' vote is irresponsible and misleading.

By no means guaranteed. In our case the Trust of Promise dies if NATS goes into administration that was not the case for the Railway workers whose protection was written to survive that circumstance.

It's never been in doubt that increasing contribution rates would allow our current scheme to continue for existing members. The problem is that NATS says it can't afford to pay all the potential increase and the no decrement clause means we can't. Even if we could I can't see many NATS staff being happy to pay the extra 10% that would be required.

I think we are just having a laugh :)

Looking good though NO100% 7YES0% 0

So are you saying that if the trustees, management and employees all agree to increased contributions the 'no decrement' clause couldn't be set aside?

Why haven't employees been given the choice of increasing contributions instead of having their pension slashed when they come to retire?

Can you show us how your calculations that produced the requirement for employees to pay an extra 10%.

NATS say they can't afford it, where is the evidence? How much profit would have been made this year without repaying loan notes, fees for early repayment, exceptionals for moving from WD?

Not quite accurate. If the scheme is taken over by the new employer then all stays as it currently is except of course the new employer will have the same funding problem as NATS and will still have to do something.

If the scheme is not taken on by the new employer and wound up there are two scenarios. If it is not in deficit then your current earned benefits will be protected but they'll be frozen and increase only at RPI until you retire. If it is in deficit then it may have to refer to the protection fund in which case you will get less than your current earned benefits. In both cases you will then need to make new provision for your continuing pension and I doubt if you'll get anywhere near as good as the revised scheme when you do that. The effect of that will depend upon how long you have to go to retirement but is likely to be much bigger than the cap for most of us.

This was also covered in the briefings. The legal interpretation of the protection for the Trust Deed contained in the Transport Act is that every single member of the scheme has to agree before it can be changed. If one single person says no then the change can't happen. Neither the Union or NATS believes they could ever get that total agreement so it's a non starter.

eglnyt


So my statement 'in the event of NATS failing our pension scheme assets are protected' is exactly right.

In the event of HMG re-taking control of NATS are you saying that they will have a funding problem?

Are you also suggesting that the government would risk industrial action affecting millions of voters for the sake of £60m or so quid a year?


So getting a quick resolution either way now is to the benefit of employees.

The government continued to fund railtrack employee pensions when they took that company over.




The government did not do this to railtrack employees so again I ask you to stop scaremongering with wild claims and back up your statements with facts.