Mr. Tony Collins:

Just to give a practical example, as I said in my statement, when the agreement was made back in 2010, the retired workers were not at the table. There were two parties to that agreement, namely, the trade unions and the employers, and they negotiated an agreement that affected retired workers. There should not be a situation where the employer and the trade unions come together to affect the pensions of people who are already retired. Certainly, the retired workers did not have a seat at the table. If they are going to do something to affect the incomes of retired workers, the retired workers should be at the table. To this very day, 13 years on, we are still seeing the effects of that. The problem is that the agreement is in place and is still being used and we have no right to be there to try to renegotiate it or to overturn it. There is no end date on it. I have never seen a situation where there is an agreement without an end date. I am sure those who are familiar with industrial relations will appreciate that an agreement starts on a particular date and it has to end. This agreement has absolutely no end date. That is a practical example of how we are still being affected.

There have been other issues in the past year. The governance and rules of the scheme apply to all members. They have had consultation a process and negotiations with the employee members of the scheme on those issues. There have been two rule changes during the past year. The retired workers were not involved or included in that process, nor did anybody speak to them. The changes just went through seamlessly and we had no involvement at all in the process. That is the effect it has had.