UK – Occupational pension schemes could be breaking the law by not offering access to part-time workers, a report by the UK Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) claims.

In a research paper on equal pay and working conditions the EOC suggests that as many as 12% of part-time workers in the UK still do not have the right to join their employer pension fund, despite the fact that this has been illegal since 1995.

The research involved a telephone survey of senior human resources managers in 301 large organisations (at least 200 employees).

In a separate survey on attitudes to equal pay, the EOC found that nine out of ten respondents felt that when men and women retire with the same qualifications and doing the same jobs, that they should have the same amount to live on.
The majority who did so argued that it was wrong to penalise a woman for taking time out of work to have a family.