AMIDST THE uncertainty that has engulfed world stock markets since the beginning of the New Year we are pleased to be able to bring some good news. Thanks to the raft of new legislation about pensions and our persistent campaigning, we will soon have two democratically elected pensioner-trustees on the board of the Unilever UK Pension Fund. Final details have been announced as to how the elections will be conducted. In future the many thousands of members of the fund will have two democratically elected representatives on the board, which will comprise 13 members instead of the previous 14. There will be an independent chairman, who is yet to be named, six trustees appointed by the company, four elected by some 38 employee pension delegates and two voted in by eligible pensioners themselves. This is progress but still lacking proportion when you consider there are only around 6,000 employees compared with some 45,000 pensioners and another 43,000 due to receive pensions which have been deferred to a future date. Nevertheless, the move will relieve some of the pressure on the existing pensioner-trustee Richard Clark, who has worked tirelessly on behalf of all members of the fund. He succeeded the first pensioner to be elected to this role, COUP founder Dennis Cockerill, who served for four years. RESPONSIBLE ATTITUDE We cannot help but draw attention to the contrasting attitude of BP, the British oil giant. An actuarial valuation showed that the company’s pension scheme was so well funded – nearly a third more than necessary to meet its liabilities – that BP announced it was ceasing making employer’s contributions for 2008. However, along with the trustees and the scheme’s actuaries, BP said it would review the situation on a monthly basis and resume contributions if the surplus cushion fell below 11.5%. Especially in today’s difficult financial environment, we can understand the sense of the company not wishing to put unnecessary cash into the fund. Nevertheless, it is important that the assets used to underpin members’ benefits are protected from stock market volatility if at all possible. Such a responsible attitude also reduces the possibility of the fund ever plunging disastrously into deficit as happened with most funds, including our own Unilever UK Pension Fund, in the early 2000’s. Unilever UK Pension Fund could do well to introduce the 11.5% cushion into its own policies, possibly via its Statement of Funding Principles, and we are raising this issue with the company.