Special Executive Report: January 2012

There was a Special Meeting of the Executive on 12th January to respond to the latest offer from Government in the Pensions Dispute. Christine Blower and Kevin Courtney reported on the developments in the negotiations.


Kevin felt that there had been progress in the negotiatons with government should be pleased by some of the movement made, but we cannot sign up to any agreement that enshrined a pension age at 68 or a 50% increase in contributions. The overall "cost ceiling" for the scheme has not been changed since the November discussions. The concessions over accrual rates and early retirements have been paid for by changing the way career average would be uprated (from average earning increases, to CPI +1.6, which is a significant gamble, especially for younger teachers.)


In December the teacher unions were told that a previously floated proposal to deal with an increasing State Pension Age through a formula of State Pension Age minus 3 was now off the table and that there was no longer any possibility of any move on the cost ceiling. The civil servants then raised another formula - that for the years early retirement before age of 68 would be made a little more affordable by using a 3% early retirement reduction factor for the years from 68 to 65 – instead of the 5% actuarial reduction factor.


On Monday 19th December the unions were presented with a draft “heads of agreement” document – which contained accruals at 1/59 and revalorisation at CPI + 1.6%. During the day the Treasury officials agreed to move the accrual rate slightly to 1/57


Because of the absences of important paragraphs and annexes the NUT negotiators had suggested that there should be no pressure to agree to a document before the imposed deadline of 2pm on Monday 19th. The position the Union took was to reserve its position on the grounds that the document was incomplete as well as unacceptable. The NASUWT, UCU and UCAC also took that position.

The missing annexes that have been now been produced concerned fair deal – and were expected to contain reassurances about access for private school teachers to the scheme. In fact it is silent and contains no reassurances. There is nothing in any of these annexes that address any of the Union’s concerns.

Certain threats have been speculated about not signing up – we might be excluded from further talks on the detail of the scheme – this seems to be happening to the PCS in the civil service talks. It is also speculated that the pre-November 2nd "reference scheme" might be imposed (i.e. with a cost ceiling based on accruals of 1/65 and without the partial protections for scheme members within 10 years of retirement next April.)

The motion agreed by the Executive is reproduced below.

At the time of writing, GMB, Unison, Napo, Prospect, FDA, ATL, CSP and other unions have signed up in principle to the "Heads of Agreement" laid out by Government. NUT, NASUWT, PCS, UCU, UCAC and Unite have reserved position or rejected these. The PoA will not sign up without movement on age. The British Medical Association and the Royal Colleges of Nursing and Midwives are balloting members on the offer.