Workplace pensions were originally developed as an employee benefit, i.e. deferred salary to support those who could no longer work. However, without changing their essential role, they have changed in conception over the past few decades into a financial product, rather than part of an employment package. My sense is that this erodes both a collective sense of ownership and the leverage we as members have to demand genuine representation in decision making.

These changes weren’t deliberate; like most pension changes, they resulted from a combination of policy and market changes. Workplace pensions developed across the public and private sectors during the 1900s. As trade unions grew in influence, they negotiated over pensions alongside wages and working conditions. Many schemes were run by trustee boards attached to an employer, and employees gained formal rights to nominate some of the trustees.

Over the past few decades, the connection between employees, employers, and pensions has weakened. As DB schemes closed and DC provision became more common, the promise of deferred pay became an individual pot.

Employers increasingly began to source pensions from external providers, while automatic enrolment resulted in most active members saving into schemes run by a company separate from their employer. Pension management became focused on investment performance, charges, and customer service. The pension remains funded through employment, but its management has become a financial service purchased by the employer.

At the same time, the weakening of the connection between trade unions and pensions means that many members no longer have a large, organised body lobbying on their behalf. Members are now treated as customers rather than as employees with a collective interest in their deferred pay. That framing has made it easier to accept the idea that multi-employer schemes can manage the deferred pay of millions of employees without being required to give them formal board representation. Customers are expected to choose between products; employees would expect a voice in how part of their remuneration is managed.

Nothing fundamental has changed: a workplace pension is still deferred pay, funded by the employer. What has changed is how it is governed and the language used to describe it. The shift has gradually recast pensions as financial products. This has happened through the growing distance between pension saving and the workplace that generates it. Employees remain the owners of the money, but have lost much of their collective influence over the system managing it.

Pensions goth

https://pensionsresearch.co.uk/wp-admin/post.php?post=879&action=edit Andrew Young Jack Jones Nico Aspinall #deferredSalary #EmployeeBenefits #Pensions #FinancialIndustry