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CHAPTER III

Pensions for All

We have pensions for policemen, civil servants, public servants : Why not pensions for all—up to the £1,000 a year class?

I next turn to the range of the suggested pensions. There has been considerable talk around the question of increasing the number of compulsorily insured persons to include those in receipt of £500 per annum.

In my view, persons receiving up to £1,000 per annum should also be included, for the very valid reason that industrialisation has now entered the office, and if one could get the facts, I think they would reveal that the number of private firms operating pension schemes for salaried staffs is extremely limited, and even then payment of the pension is generally dependent upon certain conditions being fulfilled.

The fact should be more widely recognised that to-day persons holding responsible positions in the offices of large industrial concerns are, owing to re-organisation, always in danger of losing their jobs. They should be given a chance to provide for their old age.

I would be prepared to increase the insurable figure beyond £1,000 per annum, so as to include all the salaried classes, for experience shows that even the higher-paid sections of the community are subject to ruthless dismissal when large industrial mergers take place. If they were brought into the scheme they would at least be sure of some income upon reaching the qualifying age. But I am sure, however, that with the bulk of the people, having regard to their experience of the widespread discharges which have taken place during the past three years, consequent upon re-organisation, there would be a general acceptance of the proposal to include in the scheme persons receiving up to at least £1,000 a year.


Salaried Class Now Industrialised


If I may here refer to the Unemployment Insurance Scheme, I should say that it should be extended to include not only agricultural workers, but also persons receiving up to £1,000 a year.

The salaried class are now industrialised. Many of them are at the present time passing through a period of great suffering as the result of the present industrial revolution. They are not only unemployed themselves, but their sons and daughters, on whose education their savings have been spent, are also unable to find employment, and their predicament is terrible.

Taking a general survey in the absence of any reliable data, I suggest that a pension scheme such as I have outlined would bring within its scope between 750,000 and 1,000,000 persons who are either on the unemployment registers and will continue to remain so until they die, or who are still in industry standing in the way of the employment of younger people.

There has always been a good deal of argument as to whether pensions should be provided through the medium of a contributory scheme or by direct taxation by the State.

Naturally, I am in favour of direct taxation. The heavy cost of the administration of a contributory scheme—the provision of stamps and cards and all the other paraphernalia, and the officialdom—would be saved.

It is, of course, difficult to estimate the cost of a scheme of the character I have outlined, but if I cannot get a pensions scheme, the cost of which would be met by direct taxation, then I am prepared, so vital is the problem, not to quarrel with a contributory scheme. After all, whatever the method, the cost must in the end come out of production.

There is also the fact that we have got used to the contributory method in other directions, and my experience is that workmen in industries which are not covered by a pension scheme would, in the absence of any better provision, support a contributory scheme to provide for their old age.


Contributions


In connection with the existing forms of State Insurance three units operate—the worker's, the employer's and the State's. In the Pension Scheme I propose I take the view that these units should be allocated as follows: half a unit to the workman and the balance between the employer and the State.

Such a division of the contribution is vital, because while it is true that the workman will be provided with a pension, a real saving will be effected by the employer and the State, since the cost of unemployment amongst aged workers will have been transferred to the Pension Fund.

The employer already benefits by a reduction in labour costs as the result of introducing new machinery, and he will also effect a still further saving because he will have been relieved of the necessity of making the grants which, in many cases, he now feels compelled to make.

The State also benefits already in the increased income-tax returns from higher production and investment, and it must be remembered that the State will also save considerable expenditure at the other end of the scale by the removal of large numbers of aged workers from the unemployment register.

I appreciate that in order to arrive at the cost of the scheme as a whole it will be necessary to get down to actuarial calculations, but I estimate that the liability can be carried for the very moderate additional contribution of 1s. 6d. per week per person.

If a contributory scheme is adopted, however, no contributions should be made by persons when unemployed, and the pension should not be affected by the duration of the unemployment period. This means acceptance of the principle that when persons are unemployed it is because the present system cannot provide them with work.


Houses for Pensioners


In addition to the pension scheme, I suggest that there should be established in every locality a scheme for the building of small houses for elderly pensioners, each with a small plot of land for gardening purposes. This would serve as a draw-off for the houses of the industrial workers and help towards the solution of the housing problem. The provision of the plot of land would give the old people an opportunity of utilising their spare time.

Before leaving the question of pensions, I would call attention to one very striking fact. We have already established pension schemes for policemen, Civil servants, public servants, and many other classes of the community, numbering in totality somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4,000,000, but the people who need pensions most—the miners, dockers, and other transport workers not covered by a scheme, the textile workers, the engineering workers, building, agricultural and general workers, all those, in fact, upon whom the trade of the country really depends—are denied the right, and denied it because industry itself cannot find a way to organise it. Therefore the State must organise it for them.

In my own Union we have been able to establish pension schemes for workmen in public services, but when we seek to establish the same principle for the dockers and general workers it is very galling to be met with a blank refusal. Good-luck to those for whom the principle has been established, but it should not be limited to them.

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