‘Barclays workers could strike’
July 27, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Barclays is bracing itself for the possibility of strike action by its workers after it announced plans to close its final salary pension scheme. The move has infuriated staff members, and the union Unite has said that 92% of its members have requested a ballot on whether they should take industrial action.
It has now been decided that the ballot will be held in August, and if a strike is voted for then the industrial action will take place in September. This is likely to be a huge frustration for the bank, but many workers will feel that it is justified. 17,000 staff will be affected if the final salary scheme is shut down, meaning their pensions will not be linked to their salaries, so it is clearly a cause of huge upset.
Derek Simpson is the co-leader of Unite, and he called Barclays plans “unacceptable” and promised that members will not just accept it if the bank “rides roughshod over their retirement security”. 25,000 staff are represented by Unite at Barclays, over a third of the bank’s employees in the UK, so if they go through with the strike it will be catastrophic.
The move has come around in the first place because of what the chief executive of the bank, John Varley, has called an “untenable” situation with a £2.2 billion deficit. Closing the scheme could save the bank in the region of £150 million each year, and this would supposedly be better for everyone.
But the workers clearly don’t agree, and even more annoying for them is that the final salary benefits of the 1,500 most well-paid investment bankers in the US will not be affected.
