Adding Insult to Injury - Pensions and Equal Pay
A number of readers have been in touch to ask what the connection is between pensions and equal pay.
The answer is that after years of being cheated at work, pay discrimination against women simply continues - gets worse in some respects - adding insult to injury - even into a well earned retirement!
The reason being that people's pensions are based on their final salary or earnings - so a Home Carer earning £12,000 per year (on full-time hours) will retire on on much smaller pension that a Refuse Driver earning £18,000 - even though the woman has been on a higher grade than the man for many years!
Take the same two examples (Home Carer and Refuse Driver) both with maximum service of 40 years in the pension scheme:
And, of course, the employers and the trade unions have known about this for years - which is the biggest scandal of all!
Unison has been in the papers recently banging on about pensions - the union's senior lay member and Scottish convener, Mike Kirby, an old friend of North Lanarkshire's Iris Wylie, by the way (see post dated 12 July), has been very vocal of late - for the first time, in a long time.
And yes, this is the same Mike Kirby who kept his head down when the going got rough over Equal Pay - right at the point when low paid members across Scotland desperately needed the full support and backing of their union leaders.
The answer is that after years of being cheated at work, pay discrimination against women simply continues - gets worse in some respects - adding insult to injury - even into a well earned retirement!
The reason being that people's pensions are based on their final salary or earnings - so a Home Carer earning £12,000 per year (on full-time hours) will retire on on much smaller pension that a Refuse Driver earning £18,000 - even though the woman has been on a higher grade than the man for many years!
Take the same two examples (Home Carer and Refuse Driver) both with maximum service of 40 years in the pension scheme:
- The woman would retire on half her pension and get a lump sum of three times this amount - i.e. £6,000 a year and £6,000 x 3 = £18,000 as a lump sum
- But the male worker would receive a pension of £9,000 a year (half of £18,000) and a cash free lump sum of 3 x £9,000 = £27,000
And, of course, the employers and the trade unions have known about this for years - which is the biggest scandal of all!
Unison has been in the papers recently banging on about pensions - the union's senior lay member and Scottish convener, Mike Kirby, an old friend of North Lanarkshire's Iris Wylie, by the way (see post dated 12 July), has been very vocal of late - for the first time, in a long time.
And yes, this is the same Mike Kirby who kept his head down when the going got rough over Equal Pay - right at the point when low paid members across Scotland desperately needed the full support and backing of their union leaders.
