Visteon workers take Ford to court over pensions
EMPLOYEES at the former Visteon plant in Dunmurry are among several hundred automotive workers preparing to tackle the Ford Motor Company through the courts in the battle to save their pensions.
The decision announced today to challenge the company over its handling of the pensions dispute was welcomed by Jimmy Kelly, the Irish regional secretary of Unite, the union which has campaigned on behalf of the workers since the closure was announced and they occupied the site last year until redundancy terms were agreed.
However, the battle to rescue pensions has proved tougher and around 3,500 former workers from plants in England as well as Dunmurry, were told they could lose as much as half of their pension entitlements when Ford spin-off Visteon UK went into administration last year.
"The workers fight for justice won the moral argument and succeeded in getting vastly improved redundancy terms.
"Now the fight for pensions justice begins," said Mr Kelly.
"There are crucial issues for Ford to answer here."
Ford had described the situation as "unfortunate", but he said the union would contend that it "misled" its former workers who moved over to Visteon to join a pension scheme with the new company.
"They could legally have remained in the Ford fund. In fact, the Inland Revenue makes provision for such an eventuality," he said.
In a letter to Ford Motor Company, Unite's lawyers are seeking compensation from the company for providing 'misleading' advice to Ford workers who transferred to Visteon UK.
Workers' employment was transferred from Ford to Visteon UK in May 2000 when workers had to decide whether to leave their accrued pension benefits in the Ford pension scheme, or to transfer them to the Visteon pensions scheme.
Unite believes the information that Ford provided to these workers in order to assist them in deciding whether or not to transfer their accrued pensions benefits was misleading.
The union maintains that the information provided led the workers to believe that, if they transferred their Ford benefits to the Visteon UK pension scheme their pensions would be secure. In 2009, 610 workers lost their jobs and some of their pension when Visteon UK went into administration.
"Hundreds of workers, many of them close to retirement, were sacked at a minute's notice and lost their pensions," said Mr Kelly.
"We believe Ford misled many of these workers leading them to believe their pensions were safe with Visteon.
"Ford failed to clearly set out the risks associated with transferring the assets staff had built up with Ford - now many of these workers face vastly reduced pensions."
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Tuesday 14 February 2012
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