A RALLYING call went out to 3,000 Visteon pension holders to “pull their fingers out” and hit Ford where it hurts to get the pensions they are owed.

Around 150 former car plant workers who stand to lose up to 50 per cent of their payments packed a public meeting in St Ignatius Rugby Club, Donkey Lane Enfield last night and threatened to blockade the motor giant's Bridgend plant.

Most of them had been Ford employees and had their jobs and pensions transferred over to new company Visteon UK, which Ford created in 2000 and which went into administration on March 31.

Parent company Visteon Corporation followed by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (a reorganisation rather than a liquidation) on May 28.

The mood was at first more that of a cheerful reunion as former colleagues caught up after being separated by redundancy and retirement.

But later it turned to anger and a grim determination to continue fighting for their rights.

Kevin Nolan, Unite's convener from the Morson Road, Ponders End factory, said workers had a massive victory when they persuaded Visteon to pay their redundancy after factory occupations in Enfield, Basildon and Belfast.

“We know how hard it was on the plant to get them to pay £50 or £60 million. We didn't think it was possible when we were in that factory but we proved we could do it. We need to build the momentum, we're not going to give up.”

Mr Nolan's counterpart from the Basildon factory, Frank Jepson, getting the estimated £250 million funding gap filled would be a huge fight, four times as hard as the previous one.

But he added: “Pensions affect everyone in the country, if Visteon are allowed to get away with this companies will do this with every scheme.”

The protesters plan to get their money from Visteon or Ford before the pension is fully taken over by the Government-run insurance scheme, the Pension Protection Plan (PPF).

They fear that with so many businesses going to the wall the fund cannot possibly cope, and could be abolished completely under a future Tory Government.

Andy Belch, a former Basildon worker and member of the newly formed Visteon Pensions Action Group, said the fund was £284 billion in deficit and £50 billion down on a monthly basis.

“There are 200,000 people queuing up to get into the PPF. Some of these are major players, like Woolies with hundreds of thousands of people,” he said.

Speakers warned that workers had been lured into complacency by the “blatant lie” that they would only lose ten per cent of their pensions under the PPF.

Those who retired before 65, widows of pension holders and those who are set to retire in many years would be worst affected.

PPF payments are also not index linked and so would depreciate in real terms and the percentage of the original pensions the PPF pays out could be lowered to save the taxpayer in future years.

Those currently drawing their money already face having to give three per cent of this year's payment back because their yearly increase was paid out on April 1, one day after the administrators were called in.

Charlie Kimber from the Socialist Workers Party said the country would support those who got involved.

“Your occupation was the bright light across the dark days of the recession,” he said. “You paid into your plan and they are trying to steal it. It's not a hand out, it's not a grant, it's something you are owed and you have to get it back.”