The social worker
Glen Williams, 49, has been a social worker in Sefton for 25 years and now manages the social work team there. He has two children, earns £37,000 a year, and is unlikely to get much more before he retires.
He also contributes 7 per cent of his salary, or £270 a month, into his pension. If he works for another 15 years he would get a £19,000 pension a year but under the new scheme this is likely to be cut to about £17,000.
He is furious that not only will he lose up to £2,000 a year but he will also have to pay an extra 3 per cent into his pension from next April.
“I have worked for 25 years paying nearly £300 a month into my pension and now they are saying I might have to pay more to work longer and get less at the end of it. As local government workers we had a pay freeze last year and another one this year so I am facing a real-terms pay cut,” Mr Williams said.
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“I hope the Government can get round the table with the unions, otherwise there will be a mass walkout.”
The dinner lady
Wendy Bond, 52, is a part-time cook supervisor at a school in Wolverhampton earning about £10,000 a year for working five hours a day, five days a week. She has worked for the city council for 26 years, and has seen her salary rise only marginally, in line with inflation.
She expects to retire on about £3,000 a year, which could go up slightly under the new scheme. She also pays 5 per cent of her salary in pension contributions and may have to pay 3 per cent more.
“I cannot afford to pay any more into the scheme and I think it is unfair to make people work longer,” she said. “When I started out I thought I would only have to work until I was 60, and now it could be 62 or 63 to get my full pension. I don’t think that’s right.”
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The policeman
Alex Duncan had hoped to retire in nine years and start another career after serving 30 years as a police officer.
Currently earning about £38,000 a year, PC Duncan, 40, of the Avon and Somerset force, expected to retire on two thirds of his estimated final salary of £43,000. He accepts the need for pension reform but is critical of the way it is being handled. “I now have no idea if I can retire then and how much money I will have. How can I plan for my family?” he said.
He is relaxed about plans to switch to pensions based on career average rather than final salary, as he believes it is fairer.
PC Duncan also accepts the need for higher contributions towards pensions. But the only fair way to change pensions was to introduce new rules for new entrants, he said.
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“It is not right to change the rules of the package that I signed up for and have been paying into, and on which I have planned for my future.”
The consultant anaesthetist
Peter Maguire, 42, has worked for 18 years as an anaesthetist in the NHS and was planning to continue until he was 60. He qualified when he was 23 and paid for added years into his pension so he could get the maximum benefits.
He now earns £88,000 a year as a consultant in Northern Ireland but would expect to be on at least £100,000 when he is 60, entitling him to a pension of about £50,000 a year. Under the Hutton reforms he will have to work up to five years more and is likely to retire on about £30,000 a year under a career average scheme, although he will retain some accrued benefits.
“I am furious that I will have to work longer,” Dr Maguire said. “Doctors tend to burn out later in their career and I want to enjoy my retirement.”