{"id":8380,"date":"2016-04-13T16:42:58","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T15:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=8380"},"modified":"2016-04-13T16:42:58","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T15:42:58","slug":"cynical-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=8380","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Cynical&#8217; attack"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Volkswagen bosses are opportunistically using changes to UK pension funds to hand down a total of \u00c2\u01411.4m of costs to Bentley workers, said Unite the trade union for UK automotive workers.<\/p>\n<p>The German auto giant, still beleaguered by last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s emissions scandal, is taking advantage of changes to the contracting-out of staff pensions to pass down the \u00c2\u0141800,000 cost of rising employer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s national insurance contributions to 1,300 members of the defined benefit pension scheme. This is in addition to the 1.4 per cent personal national insurance rise for each member, equating to a further \u00c2\u0141600,000.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The proposals follow government changes to state pensions, which will see the employer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s National Insurance (NI) contributions increase by around two per cent per year. In response Volkswagen plans to hand this cost down to employees of its Bentley subsidiary, by forcing staff to pay an extra two per cent of their salary into their defined benefit pension scheme.<\/p>\n<p>While the new legislation comes in to effect this month, Bentley workers will be forced to pay the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s additional two per cent change from May 1. Unite is calling for the company to hold a genuine consultation with staff and work with the union to look at other ways for these charges to be off-set.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u015bBentley Motors has remained a success story despite its parent company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s problems,&#8221; said Unite national officer for the automotive sector Tony Murphy. &#8220;There is no doubt that Bentley can afford to pay its own NI costs without expecting hardworking staff to foot the bill.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhat we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re seeing is a cynical attempt by Volkswagen to take advantage of these pension changes to help off-set the costs of the disastrous emissions scandal,&#8221; he added. &#8220;Bentley workers didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t cause Volkswagen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crisis, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s absurd to expect them to pay for it now.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bUnite calls on the management of Bentley and Volkswagen to drop these unfair charges and work with us to find alternative ways to off-set these pension charges.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Volkswagen bosses are opportunistically using changes to UK pension funds to hand down a total of \u00c2\u01411.4m of costs to Bentley workers, said Unite the trade union for UK automotive workers. The German auto giant, still beleaguered by last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s emissions scandal, is taking advantage of changes to the contracting-out of staff pensions to pass [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[386,270],"wps_subtitle":"Volkswagen bosses make Bentley workers pay","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8382,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8380\/revisions\/8382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}