Members of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (ISTC) yesterday struck three of the Caparo Steel Group?s plants over the company?s attempts to eliminate the current defined-benefit pension plan and switch to a defined-benefit plan with a reduced pension salary or to a defined-contribution plan in which workers shoulder all the risks. Although workers at some plants have been engaged in a work-to-rule for forty days and have been boycotting overtime work (see WIT for July 5, 2002), this is the first time they have struck over the issue at this company owned by a member of the Labour Party in Britain?s House of Lords. Having continued to contribute to their pension plan even as the company took a ten-year leave from contributions from 1990 to 2000, workers insist that they are willing to help the company through a tough steel market and are simply seeking the pension security they have long saved for.
See "Pensions anger prompts steel workers to hold first strike over final salary schemes", DAVID TURNER, Financial Times, August 14, 2002