Government workers’ unions joined forces to urge Tynwald to reject calls to close the public sector pension schemes to new staff.

Treasury member Bill Shimmins MHK tabled an amendment to a motion on the legacy funding gap, debated by politicians this week.

Heads of Prospect, Unite, Unison, the British Medical Association, the Fire Brigade Union, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives, and the University and College Union are among 14 unions that have written a joint letter to MHKs and MLCs.

It states: ’We are writing on behalf of thousands of our members, about the public sector pension legacy funding update and the related motion and potential amendments that will be debated by Tynwald.

’We have taken the unusual step of writing to you jointly because of the huge importance of this issue for the future of our members and their families, for the public finances of the Isle of Man and for industrial relations on the island.’

The union heads said their members will be ’dismayed’ to hear about the latest reform proposals, and Mr Shimmins’ amendment in particular, will ’lead to recruitment and retention problems and will cause resentment’.

A Cabinet Office report has ruled out a series of options to tackle the spiralling funding gap - the shortfall between contribution income and benefit expenditure - which is expected to rise from the current £36.67m to £131.21m by 2059-60.

It claims closing the current schemes to new members will need an extra £2.3bn of funding over the next 50 years.

Instead, noting there is ’no miraculous fix’ to the legacy funding gap, it recommends bringing in a voluntary defined contribution (DC) scheme for new staff.

But Mr Shimmins believes the current unfunded schemes should be closed to all new members who should automatically go onto a new DC scheme - insisting this is the ’fairest solution to all’.

He said: ’We cannot keep kicking the can down the road.

’The tried-and-tested method which has been used by many organisations to address large pension deficits is to close the Defined Benefit scheme to new entrants.

’This protects the existing members in the scheme and also restricts further ballooning of the liability to the taxpayer.’

He accepts closing the scheme woulds create a ’medium-term cash flow challenge’ but that this was ’eminently manageable’ and in the long term will ’save the island billions’.

A second Treasury member, Ralph Peake MHK, has also tabled an amendment calling for the normal scheme retirement age to be aligned to the state pension age.

In the joint letter, the unions point out there have already been significant reforms to public sector pension schemes.

Members will have seen increases in contributions of 8.75% of pay by the time the reforms are completed, while their benefits have also been significantly reduced.

Agreeing there is no miraculous fix, the unions state: ’Our main concern with many of the proposed options is that they would go even further than the, already very difficult, detrimental changes that members have voted for.

’This would, in effect, invalidate those agreements and this would endanger the progress those agreements delivered and have serious potential consequences for industrial relations.’

The unions say closing the scheme to new members is ’simply illogical’ and will make the funding gap worse, as well as causing problems for recruitment.

Linking the retirement age to state pension age would have little impact on the funding gap, they claim, and cause particular issues for the police and fire service that would be ’difficult to resolve’.

But the members also oppose a voluntary DC scheme which if it attracts a material number of new entrants will ’worsen rather than resolve’ the legacy funding gap, and if it does not prove attractive, would be hard to justify the cost anyway.

They add: ’Finally a defined contribution scheme is simply a less efficient form of pension provision and it is a mistake to promote it over an affordable and sustainable defined benefit alternative.’