The National Executive of the teacher’s union NASUWT, yesterday refused to sign up to the government’s ‘Heads of Agreement’ pensions plan.
The NEC had met to consider the DfE ‘final offer’ for the reform of the teachers’ pension scheme which was presented to teacher unions on 20 December 2011.
The National Executive called the plan a ‘pensions debacle’ and endorsed unanimously the stance taken by the NASUWT negotiators not to sign up to the ‘Heads of Agreement’ and to reserve the Union’s position.
The National Executive based its decision on the fact that:
• the Heads of Agreement document is incomplete and lacks an appropriate assessment of the impact of the changes on teachers;
• the manner in which the DfE conducted the process of seeking to reach agreement has been completely unsatisfactory;
• critical issues of concern remain, including the contribution rates and the normal pension age.
NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said: ‘Put bluntly the NASUWT National Executive has recognised that the process the DfE used to seek to reach agreement by its imposed deadline of December 20 was a debacle.
‘Valuable time was wasted by the DfE. It failed to provide the necessary information on which meaningful discussions could take place, chopped and changed its mind on the issues which were up for discussion, and presented some potential changes which did not have Treasury approval.
‘Unions were pressurised and threatened to sign up to a document when a final draft was not even available, and even when a document was produced as the final meeting was breaking up, overnight the wording was changed unilaterally by the DfE.
‘In these circumstances, it would have been completely irresponsible for the NASUWT to have signed-up to the Heads of Agreement.’
The NASUWT is currently taking industrial action over pensions and a range of other conditions of service issues, following a successful national ballot of members.
Meanwhile, following a meeting of a senior committee of the NUT Executive, the NUT has agreed to call for further urgent discussions with government on the future of teachers’ pensions.
A union statement said: ‘The NUT remains concerned about proposed increases in employee contributions and pension ages.’
It added: ‘The NUT is also concerned that a large majority of teachers will not be able to work successfully in the classroom to age 68.
‘The NUT is also committed to appealing against the High Court judgement on the government’s change in pensions indexation.
‘The High Court agreed with us that the government’s decision was intended principally to save money, not to find a more appropriate method of indexation.
‘The NUT will continue to press the courts to declare this decision unlawful.’
• Workers from 11 Unilever sites will stage a demonstration outside Unilever House, 100 Victoria Embankment, London EC4, from 10am on Tuesday 10th January 2012 over the closure of the final salary pension scheme.’