I do admire the French. They stand up against anti-employee legislation. Most of the rest of us let ourselves get screwed over by industry.
Ex-EDS bod at DXC Technologies? Sign up to new pension scheme - or else...
Frankenfirm DXC Technologies is proposing to kill off the final salary pension scheme for former EDS staff and will refuse to fund pay rises and bonuses to those affected who do not sign over to the new package. This will impact 99 active members of the EDS 1994 pension plan and 1,119 people that are on the EDS Retirement Plan …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 14th September 2017 09:46 GMT DontFeedTheTrolls
It's always been the argument that public sector salaries are lower than private sector equivalents as the public sector pension is so good in comparison to most private sector pension deals.
No doubt if I went searching I could find empirical evidence that both proves and disproves the argument, such is politics.
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Thursday 14th September 2017 11:49 GMT Joe Harrison
Depends what you call proof. When I was a pension rep at work it was clear that management were looking at more than salary when deciding how much an employee was "worth".
For a while my own company had an intranet thing where you could see your total reward package as a pie chart with slices for company car, private health, and so on. It was not at all unusual to see people with 50 percent of that pie saying pension contributions. It's hard to believe that it did not factor in to "how much pay rise shall we give this guy".
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Thursday 14th September 2017 12:40 GMT bigiain
Its not really a viable option to stay in the final salary scheme in these circumstances
The lack of pay rises hammers the final salary pension - while you could continue to build up the proportion of your final salary (probably by around 1/60th per year), the final salary will be sitting static.
If you leave the scheme, at least your final salary will be indexed up by CPI for your past contributions, you could be eligible for raises, bonuses etc (if any) and getting the company contributions to a defined contribution scheme.
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Thursday 14th September 2017 16:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Dominion
I think you've misunderstood the options (unless I have).
Option 1) No more contributions to final salary scheme (legally allowed with or without your agreement). No more yearly accruals into final salary scheme (legally allowed with or without your agreement). Pension increases at CPI. "Final salary", for the purposes of your eventual pension, redefined to "Salary at 1st December 2017" (Subject to your agreement - only legally allowed if you agree to it).
Option 2) No more contributions to final salary scheme. No more yearly accruals into final salary scheme. "Final salary" stays at "Final salary" (since you don't agree to change) - You are no better off than option 1 - and you will never get a pay rise or bonus.
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Thursday 14th September 2017 11:45 GMT adam payne
Wilson said that as a tech services outfit, “we are constantly competing for business and clients in a competitive marketplace. Paying for more generous benefits than are provided elsewhere in the market makes us less competitive and affects our ability to grow”.
I would say that generous benefits (well I say generous but years ago this would have been the norm) helps with staff retention. Companies just have to make sure they are retaining the right staff.
Hardly any benefits, crap pension equals the staff revolving door.
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Thursday 14th September 2017 11:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
Constantly competing?
The one thing DXC is not competing for is employees.
That's the problem. They want to get rid of 80,000 of the 180,000 by the end of FY20 and anything they can do to encourage people to leave is fine by them.
Its the reverse logic of needing to attract and retain talent, they want to shed it.
If its any consolation to our new HPES colleagues, CSC killed final salary pensions a good few years back and already hadn't been offering new joiners it since the turn of the century...
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Thursday 14th September 2017 12:15 GMT Mad Mike
Re: Constantly competing?
I never really understand why companies use voluntary redundancy schemes. Whilst it may help control unions and generally makes you look better than using compulsory, it also ensures you loose your best talent. In general, those that go for it are those who know they can get another job or have other plans such as retirement. Surely, you shold try and shed your worst performing employees?
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Thursday 14th September 2017 11:53 GMT Arthur the cat
“The company would intend that until you do sign the document, you would not receive any future increases in your basic or gross pay (including bonus, commission and overtime),” Wilson added in his email
I'm not a lawyer but that looks like a bunch of constructive dismissal cases in the making.
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Thursday 14th September 2017 12:18 GMT Mad Mike
@Arthur the cat.
I suspect they're in the clear. Not defending the practice, but companies aren't required to give you a pay rise etc. So, the worst the employee could do is try and prove some sort of discrimination in their pay reward (equal pay for equal work etc.). This is quite difficult, stressful and takes a long time. Also, unless you fit certain categories (minority, sex, age etc.), you can't really claim anyway. It has to be part of a bigger discrimination claim. So, in practical terms, they're probably OK. Worst case, give the employee a few quid to avoid the fight and job done. Sad, but true.
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Thursday 14th September 2017 16:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
It's being taken out of context and the consultation mail is not brilliantly worded. But, they are simply ending the final salary scheme on 30th Nov. Those in it have to agree that their "final salary" will be as per that date....that's all. Pretty sure all closures of defined benefits schemes with a transfer to a defined contributions scheme work the same way. You can't expect your salary at retirement in (say) 10 years time to be used in the calculations for a scheme you left 10 years ago.
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Thursday 14th September 2017 13:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
They closed the current HPE pension scheme too...
... got a letter through about how they were transferring everyone to a "new scheme" with some sort of meaningless financial doublespeak as the name.
Looks like shifting my contributions to my new employer's pension scheme isn't such a bad idea with this lot...
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Thursday 14th September 2017 15:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
No longer employed by the company
On the EDS Pension website there is statement referring to these changes. At the end it says "If you are a deferred or pensioner member of the Schemes and not employed by the Company this will not have any impact on you."
Which of course doesn't mean that any subsequent changes won't have an impact.
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Thursday 14th September 2017 16:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
I was a "frozen" member of the EDS pension scheme and as I was looking at my pension arrangements earlier this year it happened to coincide with HP offering a whacking bonus to transfer out, this was just prior to the HPE/CSC -> DXC car crash merger. Most of my old colleagues seem to have done like wise. The size of the bonus (or bribe?) on offer I'm surprised there anyone left in the scheme.
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Thursday 14th September 2017 18:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
HP tried to do this to ex-Digital people.
I seem to remember that HP threatened the ex-Digital people who had a final salary pension. I think that most (all?) refused to transfer out and told HP Human Resources to fcuk off and the threat sort of went away.
It was a long time ago and my recollection of the details may be hazy, but I still get my Digital pension and HPs revenge is to always refuse to make any discretionary increases.
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Thursday 14th September 2017 21:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
No mention about the 1.5 billion HPE pumped into the pension scheme as part of the take over to make it fully funded. 300 million of that was to protect the scheme for the three years following take over and yet here we are barely one year in and it must close. Looks like DXC stole 200 million there!