Getting to know: Naomi Cooke – auto-enrolment on the brain

There is one big issue occupying Naomi Cooke’s mind at the moment: auto-enrolment. 

The national pensions officer at general trade union GMB is currently preparing for its launch by helping to train more of its officers on defined contribution pensions, as their focus has previously been on defined benefit.

There is a sense that unions could play an important role in getting employees to understand what they will be getting with auto-enrolment – or not getting – as Cooke believes will be the case for some workers.

“One of my worries is that people will think what they receive under auto-enrolment will be enough. They’ll believe it is because they’re told repeatedly by government it will be adequate,” stresses Cooke.

“But I don’t think people’s perception of adequate is what they’re going to get.”

The unions occupy a strange space of being pleased that auto-enrolment will offer more workers a chance to save for their retirement, while being concerned employees won’t be offered adequate and secure pensions.

“If people on the bare minimum see what their pensions are at the minute, that will undermine a lot of the confidence that has built up among some employees.”

Cooke has been a union girl all her working life, and has held her current post for nearly 10 years.

Before joining GMB she worked as a senior telecoms researcher at the Communication Workers Union.

“I wanted to work somewhere in the political field, but not for the political parties, and I wanted to have a policy-type role, so it was either the civil service or trade unions,” she says.

With GMB representing around 610,000 members and having a presence in a number of high profile firms, Cooke’s experience is likely to be useful as auto-enrolment gets underway.

Its members include workers from a couple of large employers that are due to launch auto-enrolment on October 1. From what she has seen Cooke believes the majority of large companies have “got their head around” the plans.

“Some companies are now talking to us about how to communicate and how to deal with it and that’s great,” she says.

But despite the positives she thinks there will be problems when it gets to smaller employers, as it’s not something they’re used to.

She also believes the government’s plans have fundamental flaws.

Cooke points to two big issues: an underestimation of the opt-out rate; and a lack of planning for the monitoring and enforcement of auto-enrolment.

The industry seems divided on Cooke’s first concern about how opt-outs will play out, but the government remains optimistic and estimates that around two-thirds of individuals will stay auto-enrolled.

According to research by the Department for Work and Pensions, just 9 per cent of people who it surveyed said they would opt out.

“We work with the Local Government Pension Scheme, which is a good quality scheme, and only 70 per cent to 75 per cent of people who could be in it are, so they’ve got a 25 per cent opt-out,” says Cooke.

“Now if that many people are opting out of a secure pension scheme, what do you think they’ll do for a bare minimum type scheme, which has none of the security and is not going to produce a decent pension on its own at retirement?”

On her worry about the Pensions Regulator struggling to enforce and monitor the implementation of auto-enrolment, she says it was months after the plans had been announced before anyone at the DWP could explain to her who was responsible for the policing and enforcement of the scheme.

“There’s no point having these regulations that say you must do this, if no one’s ever going to catch somebody who isn’t,” says Cooke.

“It may be their responsibility, but there’s not much point in having the responsibility without the resources.”

It’s more likely to be GMB that hears of any wrongdoing than the regulator, she says, and points to the working time directive and national minimum wage as regulatory parallels.

“Neither of them are well policed and they’re both stronger than the regulations for auto-enrolment,” Cooke adds.

She hopes the government is able to address both issues further down the line.

Alongside auto-enrolment the public service pension bill, which was recently published by the government, will be a big focus of Cooke’s over the next few months.

The document contains “some strange wording”, explains Cooke, before adding that it is important that nothing in the bill precludes the deal recently agreed by the unions on the LGPS.

Despite all the issues that still need to be resolved around pensions, she believes there is one benefit to the problems being out in the open and widely discussed.

“The fact that pensions has been a complete mess of late means interest in it has gone sky high, which has positive repercussions because people don’t run away from me now when I say, ‘We need to talk about pensions,’” Cooke chuckles.

“And one of my jobs is to capitalise on that.”