Fujitsu pensions fight - a wider significance

UNITE members at Fujitsu are campaigning to protect their (ICL Defined Benefit) pension scheme, following the announcement by the company of its proposal to close it.

You might have the impression that this sort of thing is going on all the time - but you would be wrong. Fujitsu is the first of a new wave of companies trying to cut pensions. It's not likely to be good news when your employer makes the front page of either the FT or Professional Pensions - never mind both.

This comes after we were hit by Nortel going into administration, as they ran the pension scheme for our older pensioners.

The outcome of our efforts to defend our pensions (and to overturn a pay freeze) against a profitable company could shape the fate of pensions for employees far beyond Fujitsu.

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Nortel into administration, ICL, STC and Nortel pensions impact

Disgracefully, most of the coverage of Nortel (UK) going into administration focuses more on the impact on the 2012 Olympics (for which Nortel is a sponsor) than on the 2000 UK employees, many of whom are UNITE members. This BBC report is typical.

Concern about what has happened to Nortel will be even wider than its current employees, their families, friends and supporters.

As Electronics Weekly comments "Nortel is the first major vendor in the ICT industry to have gone into administration as a direct result of the credit crunch". Will it be the last?

There is also likely to be an impact on the pension fund for 43,000 people, as Nortel has asked the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) to rescue it.

The figure of 43,000 pension fund members seems extraordinarily large. At least part of the reason is that Nortel used to be Northern Telecom, a firm which took over STC in the 1990s. STC owned ICL (now Fujitsu Services) until 1991. When STC sold ICL to the Fujitsu group, STC kept most of the pension fund, along with all the current and deferred pensioners. In those days of pension fund surpluses, this must have seemed an attractive proposition - it certainly caused a lot of concern to those of us in ICL at the time.

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Nortel pay strike

UNITE members at telecomms company Nortel in Northern Ireland are striking half a day a week over pay.

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