Local Government Pension Ballot

Vote Yes

You will have received or be receiving a ballot form from Amicus regarding the proposed changes in Local Government Pension schemes

How this affects you is that the proposal to remove the 85-year rule from our scheme from October 1^st 2006. This is in marked contrast to the Governments attitude towards other colleagues in the Public Sector pension schemes such as the NHS, Teachers and civil servants that retain their benefits.

At the moment we are campaigning vigorously for a positive result in the ballot. Here at the University our management has indicated that they are not minded to equalise the two pension schemes when our HERA scheme gives us equality in other pay aspects from August 1^st. (The Vice Chancellor is, of course, a member of the aforementioned Teachers Pension scheme along with the other academic staff).

Please return your ballot form early we are a small group who will be counted separately and our result will be notified to management and we don’t want as poor a turn out as the recent Academic staff. Send a clear message to our management and vote early vote yes.

Clearly a massive yes vote will have the effect of focussing our management’s mind on protecting our benefits. Yes we do have a decent final salary scheme but that is at the cost of not keeping pace with comparable staff salaries. The Government has reneged on the deal agreed prior to the last election and it is the Local Government Pension Scheme members that are expected to foot the bill in lower benefits.

We will organise a meeting with Unison as they too are balloting their members.