News / Avon Pension Fund
Workers urged to vote against pension fund’s ‘investment in arms sales’
Members of Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Bristol are urging people to join their efforts in getting a major pension funding organisation to stop “investment in arms sales”.
Gathered beneath the shaded dome of the City Hall on Wednesday afternoon, the group distributed flyers to passersby, including council employees, that explained the situation.
“Avon Pension Fund invests millions in arms companies fuelling war. Members: this is your chance to demand change,” reads the pamphlet, setting the background for a soon-to-be-launched survey that will ask members if APF should continue their investment in aerospace and defence companies.
is needed now More than ever
PSC handed out flyers explaining the situation to many council employees, as they entered or stepped out of of City Hall
The APF is responsible for administering the Local Government Pension scheme for workers in schools, offices and colleges across the Avon area, including Bristol. The fund, according to PSC, currently invests £20m of workers’ pay “in companies fuelling Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories”.
Speaking to Bristol24/7, head of pensions at APF, Nick Dixon said: “We hold aerospace and defence companies through very large funds maintained through a global passive fund, which accounts for 25 per cent of our assets. So it’s mainly through that fund and a few others that we hold aerospace and defence companies.”
Workers from many offices in Bristol contribute to APF, including Bristol City Council and the University of the West of England.
Explaining the situation, PSC member Eldin Fahmy told Bristol24/7: “The survey is going out to a random sample of members.
“Our key message is that we are calling APF members to divest. Some of the companies that we are investing in are supplying Israel with weapons, that they use to kill Palestinians and which they are using in Gaza right now to kill children.
“We don’t think APF members are okay with that, even though the board is.”
According to an update about the survey shared in August by APF, the participating members will be chosen at random, with nearly 20,000 members scheduled to receive an email anytime between September 1 to 16.
Explaining their chosen methodology for the survey, Dixon clarified the framing of such a survey one “would not consult multiple different stakeholders”. He said this includes stakeholders like members of Palestine Solidarity Campaign or lawyers for the aerospace and defence industry.
He continued: “If you consult one group you have to consult five or six other groups and a much more robust way of doing it is to get an independent expert to help you so that it’s framed in a neutral and balanced way. If we had involved any stakeholder group with a clear interest, it one way or the other that would be a risk of the survey not being balanced and neutral.”
The survey, which they say will take “less than five minutes”, has been designed by an “independent” agency, Prevision Research, who will also be responsible for analysing the data and presenting findings.
Dixon insisted that surveying all members of the APF would mean spending thousands of pounds more, which would not be cost effective.
“Out of our 100,000 members I think we’ve got about 35,000 email addresses, and it’s much more effective for a survey to be done with people who have email addresses than doing a postal survey. We’re doing about 20 per cent and the reason is that way it costs about £20,000 to do the survey and if we did include everybody [including those without an email address] it would cost between £70,000-75,000.”
While there is no confirmation from APF about when the survey will go live, one member from PSC was certain that it would be available from Thursday.
The PSC campaigners will continue visiting other relevant locations across the region, including Bath, Yate and the Frenchay campus of UWE, for the next few weeks.
All photos: Karen Johnson
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