15th September 2011, 01:22 PM
Whether some employees of the company that undertook the work get pensions or not makes no difference to the tendering process, assuming that it was open (indeed, if a company that pays pension contributions tenders against one that does not, it would potentially be at a competitive disadvantage because of the additional cost of providing the scheme). Knowing your particular concerns, I think you'd be better served focusing on the tendering process itself, rather than whether the winning organisation provides pensions or not. If the tendering process was open, and the trust won the job against other commercial companies, then the fact that some of their employees pay into a pension scheme is neither here not there - their bid was the lowest, irrespective of pensions.
I've said on other threads that I'm not particularly comfortable with one organisation acting as both curator and contractor, as no matter how many firewalls are theoretically in place, there's still the potential for conflict of interest (or even just the perception of conflict of interest from outside), so I'd share your concerns about the potential for a non-competitive market in that regard, but as I said, this is a separate issue to whether employees of the trust have a pension scheme or not.
Another thread successfully diverted!
I've said on other threads that I'm not particularly comfortable with one organisation acting as both curator and contractor, as no matter how many firewalls are theoretically in place, there's still the potential for conflict of interest (or even just the perception of conflict of interest from outside), so I'd share your concerns about the potential for a non-competitive market in that regard, but as I said, this is a separate issue to whether employees of the trust have a pension scheme or not.
Another thread successfully diverted!
You know Marcus. He once got lost in his own museum