Retired employees of Digital Equipment Corporation are planning a protest in front of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s UK headquarters, citing Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s refusal to increase its legally mandated pension.
DEC, which once employed 8,500 people in the UK, was acquired by Compaq in 1998, which itself was acquired by HP in 2002. Registration Readers will remember that HP was subsequently split into two legal entities, HP Inc and HPE, with the latter responsible for DEC’s existing and future pensioners.
The central point of contention is that DEC pensioners on the pre-1997 service slide are not covered under current government law. Previously, defined benefit plans had no general obligation to increase pension payments. This requirement was introduced in his 1997.
Jenny McCartney, who worked at DEC in the 1980s and 90s, said: Facebook group for company alumni It means that HPE has the option to increase the pension payment or not. “Inflation has been 70% over the past 20 years, but the company has only agreed to raise wages twice, for a total of 5%.”
He acknowledged that HPE has complied with the letter of the law, but added, “This is true, but is it fair?”
A member of the Hewlett-Packard Pension Association (HPPA) Governing Group, McCartney was founded to open up communication channels between thousands of pension plan participants, trustees and HPE to help “current or prospective pensioners ” to participate in a protest outside of HPE Winnersh on September 20. Office near Reading, England.
The plan was intended to “bring public attention to the hardships affecting so many of us” and called for more people to join the protests.
Max Rasool, who worked in systems administration at DEC and held various positions at Compaq and HP from 2001 to 2008, encouraged me to sign up as well. “Ladies and gentlemen, this will affect your future, so be careful.”
Another member of the DEC Facebook group, Lawrence Hughes, said he recently lived in Germany and transferred his pension to the European Fund. “HP’s attitude really pisses me off. Pensions department.
“This is the result of years of hard work and hours of goodwill to make digital a successful company.People have to protest for a fair pension. I wish you a successful day and good luck,” he added. .
The HPPA filed a complaint with the Pensions Ombudsman in 2014 about pension conditions, but the complaint was not supported “Because the provision for discretionary increases above 0% was never an established practice, the trustees were therefore under no obligation to protect it in the merger deed.”
according to written evidence [PDF] A bill introduced by the HPPA to Congress in 2016 effectively froze corporate pensions since HP acquired DEC.
“DEC paid pensioners a price index on a discretionary basis according to affordability. Compaq acquired Digital in 1998 and promised to continue, subject to continued to pay discretionary increases to
“Hewlett-Packard acquired Compaq in 2002 and took over responsibility for digital pensioners, but defaulted on this business except for two 1% price increases, and provided ex-digital pensioners with a cost of living increase. are not paying indexed prices,” the paper wrote.
“Obviously I can’t attack, but I’m going to show HPE’s indifferent face,” said one former DECer.
In April HPPA submits another document to Congress In it, the paper found that more than three-quarters of UK defined benefit pension schemes offer “various forms of inflation indexation for pensions in payments for services that occurred before 6 April 1997”. pointed out the 2022 statistic from the PPF Purple Book.
Across the UK, the industry group said its analysis more generally suggested that “there may be as many as 500,000 pensioners who have not received discretionary increases for many years”.
An HPE spokesperson sent the following statement to The Reg: “HPE is committed to fulfilling all responsibilities to both current and former team members. Discretionary increases to relevant pensioners. The decision to award is carefully considered and made on the basis of the following criteria, which include a variety of factors and are reviewed annually. ®
