UNISON Scotland has won STUC Women’s Conference backing for a campaign against Government pension cuts that have left millions of women’s retirement plans in chaos.
Moving the motion, UNISON’s Viv Thomson praised the work of the Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) campaign in fighting ‘equalisation’ measures that have hit women born before 6 April 1951, pushing their retirement age from 60 to 65.
The UNISON motion slammed the lack of communication that left many women unaware of the changes and called for a full package of transitional arrangements, a longer term objective to equalise retirement age at 60, and an adequate, universal, basic State Pension for all.
While the Conference accepted that equalisation of the pension age was the right decision to take in meeting equality obligations, the motion said: “the decision to equalise at age 65 was nothing more than a cost cutting exercise.”
The motion said: “Hundreds of thousands of women have had significant changes imposed on them with a lack of appropriate notification. The failure to adequately communicate to millions of women the financial impact of equalisation was scandalous and has left many women’s retirement plans in chaos.”
It was jointly debated with Falkirk Trades Union Council’s call for fair transitional arrangements “so that women do not live in hardship due to pension changes about which they were not told.”
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And the STUC website http://www.stuc.org.uk/about/equalities/women