Fujitsu faces strike action

Wake up and smell the coffee

Why don't these people get real? Final salary pension schemes have been closing all over the place for years. Everyone is having to pay more for lower pension benefit. A lot of people (in and out of IT) have had their salaries reduced to zero by redundancy. The economy (national and worldwide) is completely different to what it was twenty or even ten years ago. And a lot of Fujitsu employees are sitting on preserved public sector pensions which will be way better than what people with the same salaries, jobs and length of service will get if they're private-sector staff. Which is why they don't leave and go somewhere where the grass is greener - because the grass is very green where they are, thank you.

It's hard to see why Fujitsu staff should be feather-bedded while everyone else is gritting their teeth (and the roads, occasionally.)

Strike!

Wonder if the Fujitsu executives have had their gold-plated section of the defined benefit scheme closed to further accrual too. Methinks not, somehow. Funny how 'remuneration' contracts that contain pension terms are considered inviolate, yet the same terms in regular contracts for the proles aren't.

Re: points made previously

"It's hard to see why Fujitsu staff should be feather-bedded while everyone else is gritting their teeth (and the roads, occasionally.)"

When I left Fujitsu last year I was being paid £7.00 on a temp contract - with only the statutory entitlements to sick pay and holidays and no bonuses. The perms I was working with were on around 14.5K and although they had 25 days holiday and sick pay paid by the company, I would hardly describe them as being featherbedded. It should be remembered that other Fujitsu sites pay even less.

"And a lot of Fujitsu employees are sitting on preserved public sector pensions which will be way better than what people with the same salaries, jobs and length of service will get if they're private-sector staff."

Presumably these would be people TUPE'd from public sector jobs when outsourced. When I was working on a helpdesk for a prominent regulator, my public sector employed predecessors had been earning over 20K plus all the usual public sector perks.

"Why don't people "vote with their feet" and go to get another job instead with another company, who will treat them better?"

In my experience, most of the people I worked with did just that and left if they could. But a lot of people weren't able to leave, because for example they were turned down for being too old if they applied for jobs externally. And for people outside of the South East there aren't necessarily many other jobs to go to anyway. I went to 2 job interviews at an outsourcing company in Central London, in my own time, while I was on holiday. Back at work, I was invited to an interview with a client. When I requested time off to go to the interview, it was refused. When I complained about it I was told that 'technically' I had to give 2 weeks notice if I wanted time off to go to interviews. I was also told at the same time that was no prospect of being made a permanent employee. In effect I was unable to apply for external vacancies unless I resigned and as a temp I was disbarred from applying for internal vacancies. The only way round the problem was to throw a sickie if an interview came up.