November 19th, 2018

Pensions Consultation Update

Thank you to all members for your feedback throughout the consultation so far. Many of you got in touch or attended the members meetings at various locations. We took on board your feedback and ideas to form our opening position for the counter proposal which was sent out to members a couple of weeks ago. While the majority of you were in favour of our opening position, we recognise that there were a wide range of opinions and some of you felt it wasn’t a strong enough response.

We understand why some of you feel that way and want to make it clear that although we are negotiating with the Company to get the best outcome possible from the proposals, the fact that we are negotiating doesn’t imply that we accept the proposals or that we will be happy with the outcome at the end of the negotiations. We feel very strongly that this proposal as it stands is not acceptable and have communicated this at every opportunity we have had with the Company.

For the DC scheme, we want to see the Company continue to match up to 6% contributions so all DC members get an enhanced benefit from the proposals. While we want DC members to get a better retirement outcome, this shouldn’t be at the expense of their colleagues in the DB scheme. We believe it’s possible for all staff, both DB and DC, to have a comfortable retirement. However, at the moment the current proposals don’t deliver that.

Some of you have questioned why we are not going to the media or taking industrial action. While the proposals are still proposals and not confirmed, and we are still in negotiations, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to go down that route at the moment. However, those options remain on the table if the outcome from the negotiations with the Company is not satisfactory to our members.

We’d also like to point out that the reason we didn’t give specific figures in the counter proposal was that we didn’t want to give away our opening position before negotiations with the Company formally happen. Please be assured that our counter proposal is aimed to protect low and middle earners and that we won’t be accepting figures which don’t achieve that aim.

Next Steps

On Thursday 22nd November we will be formally presenting our counter proposal to the Company. Roddy Thomson will be attending the meeting to hear our counter proposal in person. We do not expect to receive an immediate response to our counter proposal, but there will be 2 further consultation meetings after this during which the negotiations will continue.

The consultation period will formally close on 15th December. Once we know the Company’s final position we will of course come back to members and ask you to vote on the final position. At that point we will consider if any further action is necessary, which could include speaking to the media or industrial action.

If you have any questions please email unite@prudential.co.uk or speak to your local rep.

Claire Williams
Chris Russell
Stephen Newton

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