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Reports from the Hursley Retirees Club AGM (13th March)
Kevin Waller and David Newman were invited to attend the Hursley Retiree Club AGM on 13th March. The Chairman, Martin Circuit, provided a good introduction to the pension debate and then handed over to Martin Hughes who described the reasons for the dispute between the C Plan members and IBM/Trustee . Martin concentrated on two important issues, the terms of the 1997 Amendments to the Trust Deed and the expectations of members for pension increases based on past experience - see his speech in Economical with the Facts. Brian Marks followed with specific criticism of the actions of the Trustee including comments which compared the fall of the company in the league of pension providers to a hypothetical situation in which Manchester United fell to a position out of the league. Kevin Waller with help from David Newman then made a speech from which I will note two items.
The first item is clearly one way of defending the Trustee action in 1996/97. The second item is possibly intended to frighten the pensioners into submission, rather like Edward Lear's 'never run away from Nurse for fear of finding something worse'. There was the great support from the floor for the retiree speakers and an overall groundswell plus many individual comments. There was a spirited debate about the position of IBM in the pensions league when David Newman admitted that IBM had fallen from the top 10% to the bottom. To single out one comment from the floor Fred Dickinson made a splendid response pointing that he was one of the founders of C Plan and was at that time proud of the company but no longer believes that the company cares about its pensioners. A great interest was shown in the website and the information it provides.
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