A new report by the Incomes Data Services and the High Pay Commission has thrown the spotlight on the issue of pensions, and the nauseating hypocrisy of the government and the Labour Party on this question.
Workers have been exposed to a constant barrage of lying propaganda pumped out by a willing bourgeois press about ‘gold-plated’ public sector pensions and the inability of 21st century capitalism to keep an ageing population in luxury.
This report has conclusively exploded this myth.
By trawling through the public accounts of companies they have revealed that the only gold-plated pension schemes in existence are firmly in the grip of the top bosses and executives of the banks and private industries – they could have added that members of parliament also do very nicely out of their schemes and have no plans to legislate any changes to its generous provisions.
What these groups have uncovered is that on average top bosses retire with a pension of £175,000 a year.
This is not the full amount that these individuals receive, behind this basic pension lies a so-called pension ‘nest egg’ which the report estimates is on average £3.6 million each for the directors of the 100 top companies in Britain.
While the top directors and executives wallow in millions on their exit from bankrupt enterprises (careers that are usually only of a few years duration), the average worker retires after a lifetime of work on a pension of £6,000.
This figure is all set to be decimated as the coalition sets about the ending of all final salary schemes that exist in the public sector, replacing them with career average schemes that produce a much lower pension, while at the same time increasing pension contributions.
For workers in a pension scheme they will pay more for far less.
All this does not take into account the 14 million workers who are in no pension scheme at all and who face the prospect of eking out an existence in their old age on the poverty level state pension.
Doubtless, the leaders of the trade unions will seize on this report to denounce the greedy bosses and bankers and beat their chests over the inequalities of society.
What they will not answer to, is the fact that they have presided over the destruction of final salary pension schemes, fully accepting the argument that occupational have become too expensive for companies and the government to afford.
Only after huge pressure has built up from the membership have these union leaders been forced to act, with the PCS and teaching unions carrying out a one day strike at the end of June and Unite and Unison balloting for similar action in the autumn.
But one-day strike action designed to pressurise the coalition into backing down over pension cuts is wholly inadequate.
This is especially the case today when the entire banking and financial system is on the point of total collapse.
Pension funds, both private and state, are the biggest investors in the stock market.
Last week, the crisis of capitalism resulted in about $3 trillion being wiped out of the world stock markets, a figure that will be dwarfed in the coming days as the crash accelerates.
Pension funds will be destroyed completely in this crash, and pension schemes will simply collapse leaving workers with nothing.
The only adequate response to this crisis is for workers to demand the TUC call an immediate all-out general strike to bring down the coalition and replace it with a workers government that will nationalise the banks and financial institutions and go forward to socialism that will guarantee a decent pension for all workers.
