Pensions battle hots up

The CWU is to redouble its campaign against the Government's decision to switch public sector pension indexation from RPI to the generally lower CPI measure of inflation - a move that is being followed by most of the employers with which the CWU has dealings.

Delegates at the union's Annual Conference in Bournemouth last week lambasted the indexation change which will knock thousands off the value of typical pensions during the course of their payment. That's because the Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure which excludes rises in housing costs and council tax), is typically 0.7% lower than the Retail Price - though the difference as recently as January was a whopping 1.5%.

Using official figures for CPI and RPI over the last 20 years, the TUC has calculated that an 80-year-old pensioner on the average public sector pension of £5,500 who had been retired since 1990 would now have a pension of £4.845 a year - £655 or 12% less than now - if CPI had been in force since their retirement.

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Source: CWU