RMT & TSSA are balloting their members on national rail to secure the future of the Railway Pension Scheme.
The unions are seeking employers' commitment to ensuring that the Railway Pensions Scheme remains open to all employees, capping employee contributions to 10.56%, maintaining benefits and replacing the current 100-plus sections by three.
Rail industry employers have been allowed to take contribution holidays (i.e. take breaks from paying their own contribution). Given the profits that many rail companies are making, why shouldn't the people who are making those profits for them - the workers - expect a decent standard of living in retirement?
Meanwhile the government's White Paper includes such great ideas as making us work to 68 or 69 before we can collect a state pension. Another major problem with the contributions-based state pension is that those with interrupted work records - most often women who have been out of paid employment with young children - lose out. Everyone deserves a decent standard of living in old age.
On the Underground we have one of the few remaining decent pension schemes. If we allow employers to pick off the national rail and state pension schemes, as they have picked off others since the Thatcher years, they will come for ours too in the future. Unity is strength!
