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London Magazine Branch

October 1999

BRANCH MEETING

 
         ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
 

• Pensions scam
   
• Ed Moloney
   
• Branch meetings
   
• October agenda
   
• 1999 pay survey
   
• Branch round-up
   
• Training council
   
• Meetings schedule
   
• Disabled members
   
• Countdown to ADM
   

WHAT is the NUJ doing to prepare for the union re-recognition battles ahead? What is it doing to improve services to members?

Whatever your question, come and put it to NUJ vice-president Dave Toomer at our October branch meeting.

Dave knows from personal experience how much ground we have still to make up. Until last year he was father of chapel at the Bolton Evening News until he was singled out for "redundancy" by managers determined to resist union recognition at the paper.

"The law must be changed to ensure that if you are sacked and win an industrial tribunal case for reinstatement, the employer must comply," said Dave after winning financial compensation but not his job.

Conference elections

We will also be electing the branch's delegation to the union's annual conference at this branch meeting. The Annual Delegate Meeting runs 6-9 April 2000 and will be held in Ennis in Ireland.

Although candidates can still stand even if they cannot attend this branch meeting, proxy votes are not permitted - so if you want to vote, be there. The branch is entitled to send eight members to ADM.

Countdown to ADM

October agenda

Future meetings schedule

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Branch meetings

ALL branch meetings are held in Room 2D at the University of London Union.
The meeting will begin as soon as possible after 6.30pm. The meeting will finish by 8.00pm. There is a bar with very attractive prices and a cafe.

The branch is very happy to pay any member's baby-sitting expenses to allow them to attend meetings. Please see the treasurer if you require assistance. There is also a creche at the University of London Union. Please phone a member of the branch committee a week before the meeting to book a place.

If you are trying to organise a chapel at your workplace, we can help with leafleting, booking a room or providing a speaker. Just e-mail us from the bottom of this or any page.

1999 PAY SURVEY

Agenda

1. Apologies;
2. Any urgent matters arising from the minutes of previous meeting;
3. Guest speaker Dave Toomer;
4. Membership, welfare and legal matters;

THANKS to all the members who have responded to the pay survey so far. But we need many more of you to send back the forms, or to e-mail details to make the results reliable. Why not just fill it in and send it right now?

Two themes have emerged from the forms we have had back:

• Pay rates for the same job very considerably:
  
• Pay rates in general appear to be rising, especially for jobs that involve work on the Web.

Photocopy the form and pass them around your workmates, or better still, take the opportunity to go round all the magazines in your building with a clipboard, pay forms and some union membership forms.

It is still our intention to publish the results in the December issue of the Report at the latest (if we get enough forms we could do it in November).

Then we can see how much the rate for the job has changed since our last pay survey in 1997, and how rates compare with the recommendations in the NUJ's Freelance Fees Guide 1999-2000.

This excellent booklet is available from Acorn House (call 0171 843 3710), and not only lays out the minima you should accept but has practical advice on negotiating, copyright, billing, contracts and tax.

Pay survey form

Get Ready for Change

This new NUJ booklet offers essential advice, tips and assistance in organising and recruiting.

Call Deirdre Doherty for copies on 0171 843 3710.

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5. Reports from workplaces, from MABIC, NEC, National Organiser;
6. Elections to ADM;
7. Motions;
8. Announcements;
9. Any other business.

Motion

Only one motion has been received. (Other motions may be tabled on the day provided they do not involve expenditure.)

This branch notes:
The motion passed at July's meeting backing the lobby of the Labour Party conference on 26 September in Bournemouth.
This branch resolves:
To buy a block of 10 seats at £25 on one of the chartered lobby trains to Bournemouth and to send the branch banner.
Proposed: Ken Mulkearn
Seconded: Gary MacFarlane

YOUR FUTURE
AT STAKE

Branch
round-up

Stakeholder pensions could severely undermine the value of pensions schemes that unions have fought for in the past.
Nic Cicutti, until recently personal finance editor of the Independent, and now head of content at FT Personal Finance, explained the threat at our September branch meeting

We are asking members to send faxes of support to Ed Moloney, who is facing five years in prison for refusing to hand over notes to the police, as the Report went to press.

Pensions are deferred income. As such they are one of the most important concerns of trade unions. But they often fall off the 'to do' list because they seem such a distant issue for most union members.

This is a mistake, especially since the Labour government is busy dismantling state pension provision. Labour's argument is a simple one, and it is a continuation of one advanced by previous Tory administrations over 20 years: the state can no longer afford to pay pensions as it has in the past.

Twenty years ago there were 3.4 working people to support every pensioner. In 20 years' time, some estimates suggest there will be barely half that number of workers for each pensioner. This is the 'demographic timebomb' that doom mongers talk about across western Europe, though in the case of Britain it is more of a clockwork sparkler: the danger has been grossly overplayed.

The ability to go on paying state pensions depends on two things:

• Who and how much you tax;
• The level of productivity in the economy as a whole.

What is striking is how pessimistic Labour's expectations are in this formula, and how slightly different assumptions produce a totally different outcome. Indeed, under only marginally different economic assumptions we could not only continue paying the existing state pension but substantially increase it.

New Labour, new pension

There are several other important points about Labour's plans:

• The state pension is currently worth about £65-£70 a week, or 13-14% of average wages. Labour intends to let it fall to about 8-9% in 20 years' time.
• SERPS (State Earnings Related Pension Scheme) was an attempt to guarantee a decent income in retirement. Together with the basic state pension, the earnings related scheme would have delivered a package worth about 40% of average wages in 20 years' time.

Together with the basic pension, it barely delivers 20 per cent now. In 20 years' time, two combined are projected to fall to about 12-14 per cent.

Labour says it is in favour of occupational pension schemes (what else could it say!). But the introduction of the new Stakeholder Pension and Second State Pension will do away with SERPS. These two schemes also threaten to undermine our occupational schemes as well.

It will be compulsory for any firm to provide some sort of occupational pension scheme. But there will be no requirement for employers to make contributions to it.

The result of all this is that the current good practice of occupational schemes, where the payouts are guaranteed, are likely to be replaced by 'money purchase' schemes, where what you get out is not guaranteed at all.

How much your money purchase pension pays out depends on how well your investments in stocks and bonds performed before you retired. By contrast, the traditional final salary scheme pays a guaranteed proportion of your last salary, and if the employer is responsible for plugging any gap if the fund's investments performed badly.

The government says employers who offer stakeholder schemes need offer no guarantees as to the level of pension you are likely to receive - and they can set their contributions at any level they wish. The consequences are that bosses will probably only offer money purchase schemes in future, and they will impose cut-off dates for employees who can be members of existing final salary schemes.

What employers do will have a critical effect on the value of pensions that their workers have to live on in their retirement.

Current schemes require some form of staff representation (often this is not seen as a union function). Being on the board of trustees can be pretty meaningless in terms of influence, but you will find out about what is being done with the money in the fund, and - at the very least - you will be in a position to make propaganda about the need for a union in that workplace if one is not recognised. This can be particularly valuable.

Personal pensions

Unless you are earning a good wage, personal pensions may be simply a way of spending £15-£20 a week through half your working life in order to buy something that you already possessed through your National Insurance payments. Building up a pot of £40,000-£50,000 to retire on sounds good until you realise it only buys a pension of £60-£70 a week - which you were entitled to anyway. (To build up a pot of £100,000 would require weekly contributions of around £20 for 30 years.)

Indeed, even Howard Flight MP, shadow economic secretary to the Treasury, and joint chairman of Investec Guinness Flight has said: "It is indeed questionable whether or not a financial adviser should advise anyone earning up to the average wage to join a stakeholder scheme."

Of course, he is not sympathetic to a decent state pension, but as a man who manages other people's money for a living (and also attends Parliament) his criticism of the stakeholder pension shows just what a bad deal it could be.

What unions should be saying is that at the very least the stakeholder regime needs several important safeguards, such as:

• Employers must, at the very least, match the pension contributions of their employees;
• Employers should face penalties, such as tax increases, if they fail to get enough staff (certainly a majority) to join their occupational scheme.

Unions should also be waging war on the Victorian attitudes that seem to accompany the governmen's and employers'enthusiasm for workers being forced to take personal responsibility for their retirement. There should be no place for this sort of Scrooge mentality in the third millennium.

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Ed is northern editor of the Dublin-based Sunday Tribune, and his articles alleging collusion between the police and the loyalist murderers of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane have embarrassed the RUC.

Either fax Acorn House (0171 837 8143)

or e-mail Dublin NUJ branch brof@itw.ie who will pass on messages of support and protest.

Get the latest news about Ed's case at www.clubi.ie/nuzhound

Demonstration

The branch sent a delegation with the banner to join the 8,000-strong lobby of the Labour Party conference on 26 September. They joined a delegation from the NUJ book branch.

Since September's meeting was inquorate, no motions were passed.

Training matters

The NUJ needs to take up a place on the Periodical Training Council. The only requirements are that you be a staff journalist (ie not a freelance) and have some spare time to attend the meetings, which are generally bi-monthly in work time. For more details e-mail Linda Rogers at Acorn House (LindaR@nuj.org.uk).

Win a trip to Ennis

Countdown to Ennis

WHERE? Ennis, on the west coast of Ireland, where the NUJ will hold its annual conference in April 2000.

Ennis is also a rather more attractive place than Eastbourne, the venue for our last conference, so we might see many more candidates putting themselves forward for election as delegates this time.

We have to elect our delegation no later than the 10 January branch meeting to meet the timetable laid down for for voting on motions, amendments and delegates. The branch is entitled to send eight delegates.

The Annual Delegate Meeting (ADM) itself runs 6 to 9 April, so the branch will get a very fresh report back on 10 April (though our delegates will be anything but fresh by then).

The timetable also means that the branch's last opportunity to send a motion to ADM will be our November meeting. And because members must receive seven days' notice of motions, in practice your motion has to reach the Report editor no later than 22 October.

So, if there is something you think the union should be doing nationally - or should stop doing - get scribbling soon.

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ADM motions and nominations to the NEC must be in by
22 November 1999

The preliminary ADM agenda will be issued on
20 December 1999

Amendments to motions already contained in that agenda, and names of ADM delegates, must be received by
7 February 2000

Final agenda will be issued
28 February 2000

Annual Delegate Meeting
6-9 April 2000

Branch meeting schedule