Pension challenge given green light

Tuesday 13 December 2022

A police union and group of senior civil servants will be able to challenge changes made to their pensions.

They are arguing that amendments made by the States six years ago attempting to ensure the pensions remained affordable for the taxpayer were unfair.

The disagreement has rumbled on since early in 2018 and follows the States closing the final salary pension scheme, replacing it with a Career Average Revalued Earnings based scheme.

Pictured: Guernsey Police Station. Police employees were one group challenging the judgment in court.

The Guernsey Police Association and 'The Group of 50' senior civil servants will have their case heard by an industrial disputes tribunal early next year after an attempt by the States to block it proceeding were unsuccessful.

But another group that was similarly unhappy with what had happened, The Association of Guernsey Fire Fighters, can not move forward after a ruling by Lt-Bailiff Hazel Marshall in The Royal Court.

The States had brought a judicial review of the decision by the Industrial Disputes Officer Stuart Le Maitre to refer all three complaints to a tribunal, arguing that they were not industrial disputes as defined by the law.

"They point out that the adoption of the 2016 rules took place after several years' hard-fought negotiation between officials of the States and representatives of employees' organisations, set up for that very purpose, and that the new rules were only implemented after balloting among the representative organisations had disclosed a sufficiently substantial representative majority acceptance that it appeared reasonable to the States to implement those new rules," said Mrs Marshall in her judgement.

"They say, therefore, that any such grievances as are now being pursued should have been pursued many years ago, by the route of seeking, if possible, judicial review of the relevant States resolution."

Pictured: Guernsey Fire Station. Firefighters can not appeal the decision on their pensions. 

The States also argued that the complaints should actually be seen as breach of contract or about the operation of the rules themselves and dealt with instead through the court, not an industrial dispute tribunal.

A binding agreement had already been reached with Unite about the issues raised in the complaint made by the firefighters, the States pointed out, and the group were members of that union.

Representing the industrial disputes officer, Advocate Robin Gist said that arguments made by the States were irrelevant to the judicial review which was simply about the validity of the decision the IDO had made.

The merits of the disputes were matters for the tribunal to investigate and the States' application should be dismissed for being "at best, premature".

Under the 1993 law, an industrial dispute is defined in broad terms as: "any dispute or difference between an employer and an employee or between an employee and employees, connected with the employment or non-employment, or the conditions of employment of any person".

The judge agreed with him that the complaints were industrial disputes, but the decision to refer the group of firefighters to a tribunal was an error because they were bound by the agreement Unite has reached with the States.

Pictured: Some of the civil servants based at Frossard House were among the plaintiffs. 

Mrs Marshall described the result of the proceedings as a "score draw".

She regretted the "untidiness" of the consequences of her decision, but said it was unavoidable on the basis of the law as it stands.

The issue with the board definition of what an industrial dispute is has been raised several times, including in 1991 and when the 1993 law was debated in the States and again in a 2010 report on how it operated in the Guernsey Airport Fire Fighters dispute.

"As no action has been taken to moderate this effect, it must be assumed that the States considers that it is in the best interests of
Guernsey, as a matter of industrial relations generally, to have a very broad definition of 'industrial dispute' administered by the IDO as a lay official, notwithstanding the possible practical disadvantages of this, which the present case has highlighted,' said Mrs Marshall.

In total there are now about 5,000 members of the States pension scheme.

The Guernsey Police Association wrote to the industrial disputes officer in March 2018 to register a dispute arguing the pension changes were detrimental contract breaches, one example being "enforced" changes to retirement ages.

The G50 begun their case in September 2019. They did not, as others did, have their final salary scheme protected under the new arrangements and stated this constituted age discrimination and the changes had failed to comply with an objective to align the Guernsey scheme with similar UK public sector pensions.