BHS could collapse within weeks.
If it goes under, it will leave a massive pensions deficit of £571 million. Thousands of workers won’t just lose their jobs -- they could also lose great chunks of their retirement savings.
Most of that deficit was built up under Sir Philip Green, who owned BHS for 15 years until 2015. During that time, he underfunded the pension scheme -- while paying his wife £400 million in BHS dividends, all channeled through a tax haven.
While BHS workers face an uncertain future, the Green family is waiting for a new £100 million superyacht to be delivered any day now. Let’s show Philip Green we won’t stand by while he sails off with BHS workers’ futures.
Philip Green: fully fund the BHS pension deficit you built up!
Philip Green offloaded BHS for £1 last year, washing his hands of the struggling business and its skyrocketing pension problems. The new owners have failed to turn the business around, and now BHS has begun insolvency proceedings.
But unluckily for Green, former owners of corporations can be asked to pay up to cover the pension deficits they helped to create -- even if they have sold the business. And, right now, the UK pensions regulator is deciding whether to order Philip Green to cough up £280 million -- an amount that would still see 13,000 BHS staff take a 10% cut to their pensions.
But Green is trying to wheedle out of even that. Instead, he has offered to pay a paltry £40 million -- small change to a man worth £3.5 billion. That’s just insulting.
Let’s not let Sir Philip Green get away with it. He underfunded the pension scheme while squirrelling away hundreds of millions in tax havens -- and he needs cough up the full amount. As a community, SumOfUs has been fighting corporate exploitation of workers for years. Now let’s stand with BHS workers as they face an uncertain future.
Tell Philip Green to fully fund the pension deficit he built up, so BHS workers don’t have to take a pension cut.
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More information:
Philip Green could face £280m demand over BHS pensions deficit, The Guardian, 13 March 2016