Dover Pilot wrote:Rubbish - I know several P&O staff that were made redundant and have already accepted their same job without a pension, lower pay and a watered down contract.
Yup, And it's nothing new. In 2015, the Government introduced reforms to public service pensions, meaning most civil servants were moved from classic, classic plus, premium and nuvos into the alpha pension scheme. Those within 10 years of their normal pension age remained in their old schemes with 'transitional protection'.
My son is an 'academic' and proposed cuts to the pension offered to hundreds of thousands of university staff will leave a typical lecturer more than a third worse off in retirement, according to union analysis.
What people have to realise is that much of what we think of as 'normal' and 'expected' is actually an unsustainable blip in history.
For example when Old Age Pensions were introduced in 1909, life expectancy from birth was 52 and the average pensioner who lasted long enough to get a pension only survived for <3 years.
My own father, like many others, spent almost as long retired as he did working with a Civil Service pension of half his final years salary rising in line with inflation.
I plan to do the same. God knows how it will be paid for!
The P&O 'problem' merely makes local a much wider problem.
As for the 'pay' side of things why should a cleaner on a ferry be earning multiple times what the cleaner in my local Wetherspoons does? Or the guy pulling pints? Or the person working in the on-board shop?