“New row over post pensions” leads a story in the Daily Mirror while The Times headline goes further with “new strike threat looms for Royal Mail”.  Both stories relate to “plans to slash the pensions of 165000 workers”.   “Closing the group’s final salary fund would force posties to work up to five years longer or see annual pensions cut by £2000”.   Both stories detail the Union’s announced plans to ballot all postal members to reject the company’s pension proposals.  The stories also add that Unite are balloting their members in The Post Office for the same reasons.

The Daily Mirror story quotes a “senior CWU source” saying “the proposals are remarkably similar to the plans exposed by the Daily Mirror last summer”.   This quote refers to the front page story carried by the Mirror on July 24th 2007 with a headline “the mail pension robbers”.

The Times story today leads with the possibility that Royal Mail may face a fresh wave of action as unions “have rejected the postal groups plan to overhaul its pensions scheme and are poised to ballot nearly 150000 members over whether they back the plan or not”.    A Royal Mail spokesman claimed in The Times story that the company had an agreement with the Union on these changes “last autumn”.   This failed to take into account that this agreement was only to support the consultation process.

 The Times concluded by reporting that Royal Mail blamed pension contributions for impacting on profit in the past two years while they still paid the chief executive “a £469000 bonus”.