When we published our newsletter back in May, we had just found out that HP, once again, had not awarded a discretionary pension increase to a large proportion of our members. This is an issue which badly affects thousands of ex-Digital members and a smaller number of ex-HP plan members, but many thousands more are partially affected.

We decided first to write to the HP UK HR Director, asking what conditions would need to be present for an increase to be granted. Her reply is here.

We were not really happy with the non-committal response, and we decided to write to the new HP CEO, Leo Apotheker - our mail to him is here. After a pause, we sent a chasing mail to the CEO’s office and we received this holding response from Elaine Beddome, VP of Global Benefits.

Some time later, we received a more considered response which you can see here. We felt that Elaine Beddome had not fully understood the whole issue, so we responded with a detailed history of what had happened to the ex-Digital pension plan members (we stuck with the ex-Digital example because we have lots of detailed documentation). Our mail to her is here, an extract from a Digital Pensions Booklet is here, and a graph of the impact on pensioners is here.

We did not receive an answer to that mail, but we were not entirely surprised, as Elaine Beddome was on holiday, and Leo Apotheker was dismissed from his position on her return.

We sent her this mail, which informed her that we were about to publish our correspondence – we did not receive a reply.

However, the new CEO, Meg Whitman, wrote to all Retirees registered with the Retiree Programs Office, expressing her commitment to HP Retirees, and we felt that this was the ideal opportunity to press again for a response. Our mail to Meg Whitman is here. After another chasing mail, we received this response from Elaine Beddome.

So, at the end of all the above, we feel that our message was received and understood, but we will not know any result until April 2012.

We also feel that all pension members should study the whole history of this communication with HP Corporate, and reach their own conclusions about what it means to them.

Hello Ian,
Thank you for your recent message, and for your previous message of 12 August.