GMB and UNISON step out together

#tuc12 Yesterday’s eve-of-Congress press conference held by GMB and UNISON has attracted a lot of media interest. The most important announcement was a commitment to jointly organise in the poorly unionised and highly exploitative social care sector. Yet invariably speculation about a possible merger is making the headlines, with today’s FT exclaiming ‘two unions on path to merger’ and that ‘a merger between UNISON, with more than 1.3m members, and the GMB, with 610,000, would create the UK’s biggest union, larger than the 1.4m-member Unite. It would span local government, health, education and parts of the private sector’:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9fb26410-fa9c-11e1-b775-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz260JN9hrl

LGPS fund mergers essential to squeeze broker rake offs

The FT recently published a series of letters on the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) and the pros and cons of fund mergers. Michael Johnson of the Centre for Policy Studies takes stock of the debate and states that potential economies of scale which could be achieved by mergers are 'not in the (pensions) industry’s interests, but very much in the interests of scheme members' and that 'local councils should take the lead and confront the staggeringly inefficient LGPS.'

Fund mergers essential for survival of LGPS

It is “completel​y mad” that there are 34 public sector pension funds in London alone and 100 local ones across England, Scotland and Wales says Mike Taylor the Chief Executive of the London Pension Fund Authority. The debate about the future of the Local Government Pension Scheme has an elephant in the room - fund mergers!

Fund Mergers - the Silver Bullet in LGPS Negotiations?

Local government pension schemes will be free to reform the fund without imposing a 3.2 percentage point increase on employees' contributions, the government has announced. The LGPS has been granted autonomy to formulate its own package of reforms while still helping deliver additional 'savings' of £3.8bn required for all schemes across the public sector by the Treasury:  http://www.professionalpensions.com/professional-pensions/news/2095677/lgps-freed-contribution-increase-rule#ixzz1Skjq5TeG