As fat cat bosses at a Hereford company look back at last year’s after-tax profits of £19 million, hundreds of the company’s pensioners face Christmas enjoying the benefits of as little as £300 a year from their ex-employers – who have also withdrawn an offer of £225,000 destined for the poorest of their former staff.
Last week representatives of the Special Metals Wiggin Pensioners Action Group revealed to the Journal how earlier this year the company had agreed a schedule to repay the deficit in the company pension fund.
Hereford Conservative parliamentary candidate Jesse Norman, who has championed the Action Group’s cause for the past two years, pointed out in a letter to pensioners on behalf of the group this week:
“Alongside the schedule the company offered to make a one-off payment of £225,000 to the older pensioners, who have not received any rise in their pensions since 1995.
“This offer was welcomed by the pension fund trustees, and suggestions made for the best way to allocate the amount.
“Although not a large sum, the offer showed the company now accepted the vital principle that it should make top-up pension payments. It could be used as a hardship fund for those most in need.
Mr Norman’s letter urges pensioners to write to the company giving their own “personal feelings and views on this issue”.
“Last week the Action Group resolved to bring to public attention the very bad behaviour of the company, which has now unilaterally withdrawn the offered payment,” Mr Norman’s letter went on.
“The Group’s view is that the company has reneged on a clear and accepted agreement to pay £225,000 to older pensioners - an agreement that was a key part of the reason why at least one fund trustee, Les Collard, was willing to accept the new schedule at all.
“He was, in effect, induced to agree to the schedule by a promise which proved to be false,”says the Jesse Norman letter.
“The Action Group feels a strong sense of disgust at the way in which they, and all the older pensioners, their widows and families, have been treated by the company.
“The Group is urgently seeking a meeting with the company to resolve the issue.”
Urging pensioners to highlight their own circumstances to emphasise the difficulties many now face, Jesse Norman concludes: “The Action Group believes that many widows of lifelong employees, for example, may receive pensions of just £200 to £300 or so a year.”
And elected pension fund trustee Les Collard told a Group meeting last week attended by the Journal that in March this year Special Metals Wiggin proposed to make ex-gratia payments of about £225,000 “to those most in need”.
Trustees were asked how the money could be best distributed. “We were led to believe the proposals were a done deal,” he said.
In addition, trustees had agreed a new Schedule of Contribution to the pension fund by the company of nine annual payments of £1.35 million a year – reduced with the agreement of trustees from £1.6 million a year.
“The proposed top-up payments have not been implemented. The company has refused to provide any help to those most in need, and now states that no specific proposals were made.
“It is unjust that the company has decided to keep all of the £225,000 released by the new schedule for itself, when many of its pensioners continue to cope with pensions now worth less than 50 per cent of their original value,” Mr Collard told the meeting.
One member of the group, whose average age is about 78, told the Journal of one pensioner widow who was currently in hospital.
“She would have had a visit from a Wiggin manager by now – in the old days”, he said.
A spokesman at Special Metals Wiggin told the Journal yesterday that the company had no comment to make at this stage.
