Union Office, British Telecom, Becket House, New Dover Road,

Canterbury, Kent, CT1 3BB

Tel: 01227 760311 e-mail: cwumeridian@btconnect.com

No. 479/2016

11th August 2016

Dear Colleagues,

Defending the Royal Mail Pension Plan

Further to LTB 390/16 and in response to recent press reports referring to future closure of the Royal Mail Pension Plan (RMPP) the CWU are issuing this LTB to restate the Union’s policy and underline our determination to defend members’ pensions in Royal Mail and the Post Office.

At our Policy Forum in March, the CWU reaffirmed our policy “to protect the Defined Benefit Scheme (DB) and seek to extend the current guarantees beyond 2018” we also agreed policy to improve the current Defined Contribution (DC) Scheme.  The Forum also agreed that if Royal Mail announced under the legal consultation process their intention to close the Defined Benefit Scheme post-2018 then “the CWU will launch a campaign to stop Royal Mail, including an industrial action ballot”.

Attached to this LTB is a CWU press release which explains our position and we encourage Branches to give full publicity of this to our members in every possible way as it is very important that we commence building up awareness and support in this regard.

As in the Post Office, the CWU will use every means at our disposal (including strike action) to defend our members’ future pensions and prevent massive cuts to their incomes in retirement. Illustrations provided by the Post Office on the likely impact of closure of the RMPP and its replacement with an inferior Defined Contribution Scheme show that every individual (whatever their age and length of service) will suffer substantial cuts to their pensions in retirement.

Branches and members should therefore be clear that, whatever Royal Mail’s stated intentions; the Union remains fully committed to deliver on our clear policy objectives and safeguard the future of the RMPP and improve the DC scheme. We also intend to hold Royal Mail to the legally binding commitments on pensions set out in our Agenda for Growth Agreement which commits both parties to “jointly develop future pension strategy”.

 

Further discussions with the business are planned at the end of August and updates will be provided in due course.

Yours sincerely,

        

Terry Pullinger     
Deputy General Secretary (Postal)