In May 2021, Dow’s new pension scheme working group met for the first time, seeking to develop a robust pension scheme for the future – for all employees. We asked Alex van Noort, a member of the pension working group who represents employees, about the new scheme.
‘There was a general agreement made between the government and employers of course, but there are still lots of details to flesh out. So, we haven’t been able to make any major progress with the working group yet. Also, when the group first got down to business, we didn’t really have a way of comparing with what other companies do. And that’s important, because we want to offer a pension that’s at least as good as our competitors’.
Working together on the details
But that didn’t stop the members of the working group from rolling their sleeves up; we meet online quite often, as there are lots of issues that need to be looked at. For example, the government issues guidelines on what the contribution amount should be, but this still needs to be negotiated within a company. Of course, everyone wants to get a great pension deal, but we all need to work together to figure out how we actually arrive at that.
We don’t know the details of the new scheme yet. However, your pension will soon depend more on the capital accrued through investment, so there’s greater risk. We can still work out a great pension scheme though, even one that requires minimum maintenance. This applies to everyone in the Netherlands who builds up their pension through their work, of course. We will share more information with beneficiaries about the new scheme as soon as we can.
Constructive discussions
As an employee, I wouldn’t have any worries about the new pension scheme. The Works Council has every confidence that we will work out something that everyone is happy with. The discussions we have are constructive, and the atmosphere is good too, which certainly helps. In fact, Dow wanted to have everything sorted by 2024, but we have to wait for the government to act first. Once the agreement has been laid down in law, we can move on rather quickly from there.’