UNIONS
WIN PART-TIME PENSIONS VICTORY
The TUC
has welcomed the House of Lords decision on part time pensions as
‘good news’ for thousands of retired women who, because
they once worked part-time, had been barred from paying into company
pension schemes.
The Lords have decided that
women part timers - who had been denied access to pension funds
prior to 1994 - will now be able to claim backdated pension rights
as far back as 1976.
But on the cut-off point determining
the time between a part-timer leaving employment and the point at
which a claim for backdated pension rights must be made, the Lords
decided to stick with UK law, which imposes a six-month time limit.
TUC General Secretary John
Monks said:
"This is good news for
thousands of retired workers, mainly women, who will now be able
to receive the pension they have been denied. Justice has been won
for the women who until today faced a very bleak retirement. Now
they can look forward to old age, safe in the knowledge that they
will be more financially secure.
"But the TUC is very disappointed
that the Lords failed to listen to the union case for extending
the current cut-off for making pension claims from six months to
six years. Many women, who logged pension claims against their employers
more than six months after leaving work, will now get nothing. They
will be devastated by today’s news.
"The unfair situation
which prevented part-timers from paying into pensions funds has
been partially righted at long last by today’s decision. But
these women have had to wait a long time. We hope that employers
will now move quickly and give the many retired women with valid
claims the backdated contributions they are legally entitled to."
Today’s decision was
based on 22 test cases brought by six TUC-affiliated unions - public
services union UNISON, banking union Unifi and teaching unions,
ATL, NATFHE, NASUWT and the NUT.
The TUC and the unions have
been campaigning for the past six years for backdated pension rights
for around 60,000 part-time, mainly female, workers.
The women who were awaiting
today’s decision are mostly retired. They worked in both private
and public sector organisations which, until seven years ago, did
not allow part-time employees to pay into company pension schemes.
Following a 1994 European Court
ruling, which found this treatment of part-time workers discriminatory,
part-time workers in the UK have been allowed to sign up for company
pensions in the same way as their full-time colleagues have always
done.
However a long legal argument
about how far back pension rights should be allowed ensued. Employers
argued that only two years’ back pension contributions needed
to be paid, while unions claimed that the back dating should take
place to when European law first required equality in pensions -
1976.
There will be no immediate
payout of backdated pension contributions after today. For each
case to be valid, it will have to have been logged with an employment
tribunal within six months of the individual leaving employment.
It is likely that individual
tribunals will now hear applications relating to groups of cases,
so, for example ex-nurses’ claims will be dealt with in one
batch, teachers in another.
The advice from the TUC to
individual workers who have logged claims is to go back to their
unions to find out what to do next. People who’ve logged cases
but who were never in a union should go back to their solicitors
for advice.
New claims from part-time workers
who are still in employment or who have left work within the last
six months should be made immediately.
But anyone who is now retired
and who believes that they failed to receive their true pensions
entitlement, yet never logged their case, will probably be unable
to take their case any further.
It will also be impossible
to gauge the extent of the payout that public and private sector
pensions funds will have to make until all the valid cases have
been heard at tribunal
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