BP - the luxury of failure and the loss to our pension funds‏

The inevitable has happened. The BP CEO Tony Hayward is leaving his post with a fat payoff and his pension, rewards for failure are luxuary. BP has confirmed that he is leaving with a £1m payoff and a pension, expected to be about half a million pounds a year, as the oil giant reported one of the largest corporate losses in British history due to the cost of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jul/27/tony-hayward-leaves-bp-1m-payoff

In its second-quarter results, the company has set aside $32.2bn (£20.7bn) to meet the cost of the clean-up, far higher than the City had expected and plunging the company almost $17bn into the red. To try to deal with the mounting costs of the spill created by the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig on 20 April, BP said it plans to sell $30bn worth of assets - predominantly oil and gas fields - over the next 18 months.

This is a great loss to all of our pension funds, the UNISON staff fund co-signed a resolution to the BP AGM this year over BP's proposal to explore Canadian tar sands, another environmental disaster, trying to show leadership as owners of an out of control company.

This is the lesson we all need to grasp, BP environmental and economic disasters are the result of the poor management of our company in which our money is invested. We must show a greater determination to put our ownership power to work, for the environment and for us and not for incompetent managers like Hayward.

That starts with the people making decisions with our money, the trustees and councillors, we must make them accountable and challenge their decisions.