Rogier de Haan: ‘Concurrence allowance for former PTT employees: major interests’

Since the recent Meldpunt broadcast and our column about the pensions of former PTT employees, our consultation hours have been flooded with thousands of telephone calls. If you couldn’t get through, now you know why. If you are an old PTT employee, we therefore ask you to, if possible, opt out www.maxvandaag.nl/pttpensioen fill in your details. We will then keep you informed of developments by email.

What was that again? A few years ago we discovered a previously relatively unknown pension supplement from the ABP. Until 1995, dual-income households built up too little pension due to an error. ABP compensates for this error with the supplement for concurrent service, which pensioners must apply for themselves. But they often turned out not to know the addition. With our columns we helped tens of thousands of retirees with this pension supplement.

Surcharge for a nose wash

Former PTT employees also built up a pension with ABP before the privatization of the PTT in 1989. Double-earning PTT employees therefore had to deal with the same pension deficit. After privatization, these pensions were transferred to KPN and PostNL. Including pension deficit. KPN and PostNL therefore have a comparable pension supplement for these dual-income couples: the ‘concurrent allowance’. In practice, this turns out to be a wash: thanks to a handy calculation trick, virtually no one is entitled to this allowance.

Pension deficit due to PTT error

What we currently know is that thousands, and it is feared tens of thousands, of double-earning former PTT employees have a pension deficit due to an error and are not compensated for this. And that if they had been able to stay with ABP, they would have been compensated. In short: we know that these former PTT employees are being denied an often substantial pension supplement. What we don’t know yet is how the decisions about the ‘concurrence allowance’ were made, by whom and when. We therefore cannot yet say whether they have been able to legally close the case one way or another. And therefore not whether a legal claim makes sense.

Concurrence allowance

We do have important indications that things are not right legally either. For example, the law prescribes that the pension funds of KPN and PostNL must offer a pension that is ‘in any case equivalent’ to that of ABP. This was also a legal requirement in other privatizations. For example, with the privatization of ABP itself in 1996. And with the privatization of the NS. These funds do compensate their pensioners for the same pension deficit. Without calculation tricks. Are they playing Sinterklaas, or are KPN and PostNL perhaps breaking the law? We also see that the KPN and PostNL funds have adjusted the calculation of the ‘concurrence surcharge’ several times over the years. It appears that this was always to the disadvantage of the dual-income couples. It also appears that the pension funds have provided virtually no, or incorrect, information about the concurrent allowance. There are also legal nuts to crack about this.

We will continue for you!

The stakes are high. We want to get to the bottom of the matter. That is why we will first continue discussions with the funds and continue collecting information. We can then make decisions about possible next steps.

The many reactions to the broadcast of Reporting point and this column by MAX Ombudsman about PTT pensions in MAX Magazine and here on MAX Today, lead to long waiting times in telephone consultation hours. Therefore: would you like information about PTT pensions? Let us know via the form on this page.

(Photo: ANP)