WHEN: Friday 12 April 2019, 10:15
WHERE: International Convention Centre, 8 Centenary Square, Birmingham, B1 2EA

Members of Unite the union will be protesting outside the HSBC annual general meeting (AGM) on Friday (12 April) about the bank’s refusal to give them pensions' justice.

There will be a media photo call at 10:15 before the AGM starts. Demonstrators, wearing a ‘clawback’ costume, will be holding placards and leafletting attendees of the meeting. The campaign will also launch a new video about the practice of clawback.

View the short video: 

Former and current employees are demonstrating to expose and stop an unfair practice known as clawback after it emerged that thousands of them are having as much as £2,500 a year snatched from their hard earned company pension pay outs.

The campaign group is urging shareholders to:
- Vote ‘YES’ to Resolution 17
- Vote ‘NO’ to Resolution 3

The staff argue that clawback is grossly unfair, disproportionately penalising the lowest paid, mainly women, forced to take time off to raise children.

ENDS

For further information contact Saba Edwards on 07768 693 953.

Notes to editors:

  • Unite is Britain and Ireland’s largest trade union with over 1.4 million members working across all sectors of the economy. The general secretary is Len McCluskey.
  1. What is clawback? Clawback is the practice of cutting an employee’s company pension on the grounds that they will also receive the state pension. The first time people are likely to become aware of it is when they reach state pension age. This could be years after they started receiving their company pension, and discover that their income has suddenly been reduced.
  2. Who’s affected? 51,000 former HSBC/Midland employees are affected by clawback. HSBC UK had 190,751 pension scheme members across 23 schemes as of December 2016. Only one scheme, the post 1975 to 1996 2/3rd Defined Benefit Scheme suffers clawback, representing 27% of all HSBC pension scheme members.