Retired journalists from Independent Newspapers Ltd protested yesterday outside its head offices in Abbey Street, Dublin, over the company's failure to provide them with indexation pension payments.
The group is angry that a recent agreement with the NUJ excluded them from the benefits of indexation. The agreement allows for pension increases to be linked to inflation, with a cap of 2 per cent.
The company's human resources manager, Mr Declan Carlisle, says the company has 300 pensioners, plus another 30 employees who retired before a pension scheme was brought in during the 1970s. The company was making ex gratia payments to the latter group.
Mr Carlisle said only half the staff had negotiated revised pensions. Once the pension scheme had been revised for everyone, arrangements for existing pensioners would be reviewed.
He said the new indexation provisions were based on employees making extra contributions to the scheme. This was not a viable option for pensioners.