The Broken Promise

As 2011 closes I can reflect on the promise that was broken that has dominated the year. Our Pension. Make no mistake when we started in Public Service as I did over 30 years ago there was always the issue of why you would knowingly earn less than you could equivacantly achieve in the private sector, have little in the way of perks, gym membership, shares in the company, private dental care or staff discount but you knew that by religiously paying superannuation you may retire with at least some semblance of dignity by the time you’ve paid off the mortgage and seen your kids through college. When in the early 1990′s NHS Trust’s allowed private finance advisors to come into workplaces to talk to staff and persuade them to opt out of the NHS pension scheme and go “private” most every member of staff managed to hang on to what they had got with the advisors conceding that they were actually in a good scheme. Most of the past ten years has seen claims for “mis-selling” based on those days but we got through that period intact with the unwritten promise that if we hung on to what was created in 1948 it would compensate for the years of flat pay rises whilst private sector friends and family flourished. We then saw the changes come thick and fast, the staff starting after 2008 having to work till 65 and staff retiring on health grounds unable to access full payment unless they were unable to do any job not just unable to undertake their own job. People were living longer and all of this was necessary so reluctantly it was accepted, there was a financial crisis so two years of pay freeze was reluctantly accepted, we need to plug the gap so as citizens we saw VAT rise on all our goods to 20% and it was reluctantly accepted.
Then the promise was broken.

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