back to article High Court: IBM staff refused pay increases can claim damages

IBM employees who were refused salary increases because they would not agree to changes to the company's pension scheme are entitled to claim damages, the High Court has ruled. The judgment set out the remedies available to employees in relation to "Project Waltz". The project was implemented in 2009 to help the company meet …

  1. Warm Braw

    I Am Not A Lawyer, but...

    Nice to have it confirmed that earnings per share targets don't trump employment law. Here. Yet.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I Am Not A Lawyer, but...

      Yeah, I'd sure hate for the to simply close down.

  2. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
    Mushroom

    Waaaaah!!!! Judge won't play ball :-(

    "The Court has acknowledged IBM's right to make changes in its UK pension programmes, which encompasses IBM’s need to screw a proportion of the hard working and talented employees that allow us to compete in the fast-changing technology world, and thereby pay our US execs their obscene salaries."

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    IBM (UK) is not the only UK company that has used a similar "accept a new pension contract or never get another pay rise". Most of the major banks and financial services companies have done similar.

    Time to get the popcorn out...

    1. Little Mouse
      Unhappy

      Ah, crap - You mean it's widespread?

      I had hoped that all those cold-calling-legal-firm-cocks would just shrivel up and die once the PPI gravy train had run dry. Fat chance of that now.

  4. Yes Me Silver badge

    Well, let's think about it a bit more

    "...a quarter of UK staff being kicked off its final-salary pension scheme" [in 2009].

    However, since about 1997, new hires have of course not joined the Defined Benefit scheme since it was closed by then. So we're talking about people who've now been with IBM for almost thirty years or more, and have not yet accepted a package. So whatever the legality or ethics of it, we aren't actually talking about a very large fraction of IBM UK staff. The majority of the staff, on a Defined Contribution pension scheme, might feel aggrieved at the impact of this decision on the pension fund as a whole.

    1. Nick 6

      Re: Well, let's think about it a bit more

      Yeah yeah, we had this kind of divide-and-conquer agit-prop at the time: "you M-plan members are being stiffed by these old timers who are daring to demand what was promised. As a result you are some-how worse off."

      No - the company is f---ing over any employee they can, in any way they can, and their gain is not our loss. Not enough money in the pension pot ? That will be more to do with corporate raiding of the piggybank, and subsequent underfunding and la-la-land investment assumptions.

      There are only two classes - Armonk top level executives and everybody else. Follow the money. It only goes in one direction.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    From somewhere else:

    In IBM UK Ltd's 2013 audited accounts: £196m of IBM's UK income of £357m came from actuarial gains from the Defined Benefit Pension schemes.

    Nuff said.

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