January 17th, 2018

The 2018 SRS pay ballot opened today following the end of negotiations. The Company’s final offer which is now be voted on by Prudential Section members is as follows:-

• Pay pot of 3%
• Minimum FTE Income for London based employees to be  £18,635 (equivalent to the London Living Wage)
• Minimum FTE Income for Non-London based employees to be £17,000 (equivalent to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Minimum Income Standard)

This followed the Unite claim which asked for an across the board increase equivalent to RPI and for the Minimum Full Time Equivalent Income to be set at the rate of the London Living Wage.

Unite’s formal response to the company stated that “we welcome the ongoing commitment to the Minimum Income levels.

However, we are extremely disappointed that the SRS Executive Team and Group Remuneration Committee see 3% as a cap/ceiling on pay deals. We believe this is a change in stance from previous years and not one that is welcome. We strongly believe that when looking at a pay offer, all options should be looked at. As detailed in our claim, the cost of living is increasing above 3% and interest rates are also increasing.  Your employees and our members clearly expressed their view that in this economic climate and with the Company continuing to make significant profits that they wanted a pay deal that reflected this.

For the Senior Management to simply ignore the extensive evidence presented in our claim and only debate a pot below 3% is astonishing; it shows how out of touch they are with the people they supposedly manage. We appreciate that our claim helped move them to a 3% deal, but for them not even to consider anything above that figure is a slap in the face for all employees who help the Company achieve the success that it enjoys. John Foley stated in November 2017 “We want M&G Prudential to become the best-loved and most successful savings and investments business. We want customers to love dealing with us and colleagues to love working here”. Our members have been quite clear that to achieve the colleague goal set by John, the Company should start with basic pay.

The Exec repeatedly state that this Company and its success is nothing without its people, however, when it comes to financial recompense for employees, Senior Management does not follow through by providing those employees with increases that as a minimum, allow for a standard of living equivalent to the previous year. As a result, your employees, our members, are getting poorer in real terms each year while the Exec continue to get richer.

We are also disappointed that again there was no consideration to an across the board the element in the offer. When you look at the actual distribution last year the average increase for those who were rated meeting/meeting was 2.70%.  We, therefore, believe it would have been possible for you set a minimum increase of 3% for those employees in that box.  As we discussed at our first meeting, other Finance Sector organisations are now moving towards this and we would have hoped that a minimum increase across the board would have been considered, but again this hasn’t even been debated.  Again, we find this incredibly hypocritical and arrogant of the remuneration committee, particularly as many of them enjoy the privilege of across the board increases to their own basic pay.”

The Company made clear that this was the final offer so we have now opened the pay ballot and our members will vote on whether to accept or reject the offer.

The ballot closes at midday on Wednesday 31st January 2018.

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