Information, Participation and Pensions: Strategy‐ and Employee‐Related Issues

For most people, pensions as an issue has been mainly associated with retired people as a separate and deserving category of the population, intermittently attended to by government as a result of pressure group activity. Over the last few years, however, occupational pensions have attracted far more attention, and not only from those nearing the end of their economically active life. In the first place, the recurrent imposition of incomes policies has led negotiators to look more closely at benefits which do not fall under the standard pay heading. Some benefits—for example, increased holiday entitlements—are non‐monetary in character and take the form of a substitute for the extra cash which might otherwise have been available. Pensions, on the other hand, represent an area of potential improvement in financial terms, even if in deferred form. More generally, pensions are starting to be seen in the industrial relations world as a standard negotiable item—as part of the “total remuneration package”, to use a currently fashionable term.