Employers are enjoying a "pensions holiday" worth more than £1 billion despite the current crisis facing occupational schemes, according to a new report.
The TUC said during the last five years employers had clawed back £1.1 billion either by not paying anything into schemes or by drastically reducing their contributions.
Using Inland Revenue figures, the TUC said that even in the 1999/2000 and 2000/01 financial years, when pensions problems started to escalate, employers saved £100 million.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "Employers were quick to blame stock market failures for the losses which befell their schemes yet they forget that in the heady days of the early Nineties they took pensions holidays worth billions of pounds."
Monday November 17, 2003
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