Give workers a say over super

The country’s largest union is welcoming the Government’s move to encourage employers to take part in superannuation funds – but says that workers should have a say in managing them.

EPMU national secretary Andrew Little said that most private superannuation schemes had lost money over the past year, leaving workers with fewer savings than they thought they had.

“The trouble is that this is an area that’s been captured by the finance sector,” he said.

“They say that their schemes are performing in line with the ‘benchmarks’, but that doesn’t help the workers who belong to them and might be facing retirement with a lower income than they bargained for. If the managers of these funds were more closely linked to the workers to whom the money belongs, they’d be less likely to take bigger risks.”

Little said that industry-wide schemes set up in Australia more than 20 years ago, involving employers and workers, had been enormously successful.

“There are super schemes operating here too which have workers’ representatives on the board and they do very well, but they are few and far between.,” Little said.

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