Hi
@Robzig . Don't know if your question is addressed to me or to
@Duke of Marmalade, but I'll try to give an answer to what I think it might be. Others more knowledgeable, feel free to row in.
Firstly, it's 40 years ago since I was a pensions consultant; bear that in mind.
I'll also say at the outset that DB (defined benefit) and DC (defined contribution) occupy different worlds. I get the impression that you are in a DB scheme (don't know why!). If so, you're a dying breed. There's fewer and fewer of you Most have moved to DC.
For DC schemes, the employer says bye-bye when someone retires. It wants them to disappear out of its life. I doubt if the unions care about them much either.
For DB schemes, there is now an obligation to grant inflationary increases in DEFERRED entitlements, i.e., someone who leaves before retirement with a deferred pension based on their earnings at or around the time they left. That right didn't exist in my time. As an aside, I was a big loser under this heading: I left Irish Life after 13 years and didn't get a penny (other than my own contributions back), since any deferred pension from my years there would have stayed static in money terms, with its value eroded by inflation - around 10% a year at the time.
However, there is no obligation to give increases to people who've already retired from DB schemes (except in very rare situations where there is a contractual entitlement to x% pension increases). Of course, I'm also excluding the public sector, where pensions are increased (I think) in line with increases for people on the same pay scale still at work. Otherwise, increases are at the company's discretion. Granting an increase in pensions in payment can be very costly, however, since the company must (almost invariably) cough up the full capitalised cost of the increase for everyone who's already retired. So, for example, if it is proposed to give an increase of (say) 100k a year collectively to all retired members, then the company has to pay more than a million into the scheme. Increases to pensions in payment may be in response to demands from unions. However, the union officials may also have to consider if they'd prefer that million to go to current workers - and giving a million to current workers only costs the same to the company in terms of the hit on this year's P&L as giving 100k to pensioners.