The TUC are big supporters of the new pensions settlement due to start in 2012. Ten years ago TUC policy that employers should have to contribute to the pensions of their staff was seen as a way-out demand. Now it constitutes a cross-party consensus backed by employers, unions and much of the pensions industry, thanks to Lord Turners’ Pensions Commission and some smart campaigning by unions and the wider consumer movement.

It is right therefore to mark two more milestones on the road to the implementation of the reform package. Read more »

   Filed under: Employers, Pensions, Politics | 1 Comment »

Patrick Hosking is very rude about the National Association of Pension Funds in the Times today. He makes two charges. First:

Few have more reason to complain about the reckless greed of bankers, yet there has been barely a peep from the sector. The National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF), the body with the authority, credibility and firepower to make its voice heard, has stayed schtum.

This seems to me to be fair comment, and indeed we have already said roughly the same if more politely. But his second charge is wrong. Read more »

   Filed under: Employers, Pensions | 1 Comment »

From Dear Lucy in yesterday’s FT

“I’m dreadfully bored and depressed in my job. I work for a big bank as a portfolio manager, and have nothing to do. I tried starting new projects but have been discouraged by management. So I spend my time writing a script and studying but the fact that I have about 10 hours of work a week is killing me.”
Portfolio manager, male, 28

Of course this doesn’t prove anything. There’s both rubbish and brilliant management in private and public sectors. But the belief that private sector management is inherently superior is surprisingly widespread, even though UK management is generally weak. Read more »

   Filed under: Employers, Quality of work | Comments Off

Other than attacks on public sector pensions, the commonest pension story in the media at the moment is news of employers closing defined benefit (DB) schemes to replace them with defined contribution (DC) schemes. (Briefly a DB scheme pays a pension based on your pay and years of service and is guaranteed by the employer, while a DC scheme is simply a savings pot with your pension depending on the contributions made and how well they are invested.)

This is undoubtedly a big story, but there is an even bigger one. I’ve been going through the ONS statistics in some detail and they show that as well as changing the type of pension on offer employers are still retreating from providing decent pensions at all.

Read more »

   Filed under: Employers, Pensions | 6 Comments »

Ashley Seagar had a great column in yesterday’s newly one pound Guardian asking “Have we learned nothing from the financial crisis?”.

Much of it refers to the new Trade and Development report from UNCTAD (the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) that was published yesterday. PDF overview here and the gateway to the full version here. Read more »

   Filed under: Economics, Employers, Financial crisis | Comments Off

I wasn’t very impressed with Vince Cable’s recent Mail on Sunday piece on public sector pensions. Yesterday’s article on the challenges of an ageing workforce is much more interesting – and anyone who can introduce the lump of labour fallacy to Mail on Sunday readers deserves high praise. His thesis that we need to change attitudes to people working longer and end compulsory retirement ages is winning support, not leaast from unions. The TUC welcomed the government’s review of the default retirement age, just as business organisations opposed it.

Read more »

   Filed under: Employers, Labour market, Pensions | Comments Off

The BBC’s flagship radio news programme Today has had a couple of interesting pieces on happiness in the last couple of days, including a report from Denmark, which regularly tops polls as the happiest place in Europe. They included a clip of David Cameron’s call for more consideration of general well-being than gross domestic product. Much of the modern interest in this flows from Richard Layard’s book Happiness in the UK and the positive psychology movement in the USA  spearheaded by Martin Seligman. Of course happiness has its critics too. Should there be a trade union perspective?

Read more »

   Filed under: Employers, Inequality, Skills, Social mobility | 3 Comments »

The Guardian reports that Ken Clarke has softened Tory opposition to the Lisbon treaty. One suspects that many Conservatives are secretly not wanting an early election so that Lisbon can be ratified after an Irish referendum.

But much more interesting is his strong reiteration of Conservative plans to tear up the Social Chapter, and repatriate powers to regulate the labour market. If it is said by Clarke – the leading Tory Europhile – then it cannot be dismissed as a pre-election gesture to the Tory/UKIP fringe. It also looks like they have thought about the detail of how this might be done. Read more »

   Filed under: Employers, Employment law, Europe, Politics | 2 Comments »

Today over 200 trade unionists and green campaigners are gathering at Congress House for the TUC’s annual climate change conference.  They’ll be the first to get their hands on the new TUC publication Changing Work in a Changing Climate, which is the result of a major new piece of research into what adapting to climate change means for jobs and working lives in the UK.

Read more »

   Filed under: Employers, Environment, Equality, Safety, Skills | Comments Off

Read the TUC Recession Report for April 2009

Today we have published our sixth Recession Report, where we analyse the most recent labour market statistics.

What has been happening? It is not a pretty picture; the number of unemployed people and the proportion of the workforce who are unemployed have both risen, the number in employment and the proportion who are employed have both fallen, the number of job vacancies continues to fall precipitously. Read more »

   Filed under: Employers, Employment law, Recession, Recession Report | Comments Off