Engineering news
More than 300 workers from collapsed automotive supplier Visteon demonstrated in Parliament Square today over cuts to their pensions.
The former staff chose the one-year anniversary of the company going into administration to deliver a petition highlighting their plight with 1,700 signatures to Downing Street.
Visteon workers in Britain face cuts to their pensions of up to 60% following the collapse of the company’s UK subsidiary this time last year. More than 600 jobs were lost and factories in Basildon, Belfast and Enfield closed. Visteon was spun out of Ford in 2000. Workers at the supplier have always said their pensions and terms and conditions of employment were guaranteed by Ford Motor Company at the time of Visteon’s creation. Ford strongly denies this.
Campaigners from the Visteon Pension Action Group expect trade union Unite to commence legal proceedings against Ford on 14 April, they said today. They said they had met with Angela Eagles MP, minister of state for pensions and the ageing society, who had assured them she was “confident” that an investigation into the dispute by the Pensions Regulator was needed. A six-person team from the regulator is said to be looking at the former Visteon workers’ case.
Dennis Varney, a former worker at Basildon, said that long-serving staff would not have agreed to be transferred from Ford to Visteon in the first place without guarantees over their pensions. “Three thousand workers transferred to Visteon.
Why would we move to Visteon if our pensions weren’t guaranteed by Ford?” he asked. Varney said his own pension had been cut by 42%. “Ford just doesn’t seem able to accept that it made those guarantees in the first place,” Varney added.
The dispute has gained some prominence in Parliament. Almost 70 MPs have signed up to a motion tabled by Siân James, Labour MP for Swansea East, expressing concern at the way the Visteon pensioners have been treated.
Angela Smith, MP for Basildon, said her own father had worked for Ford and then Visteon. “The campaigners have a lot of support within Parliament,” she told PE. “They have been given promises and assurances from a company. They have been paying into their pensions for years and you expect those commitments to be met.”