Industry's headlong flight to abandon its pensions responsibilities remains an ongoing disgrace.

Now, after blocking new entrants from joining, the lemmings are beginning to shut final salary schemes for existing members.

Rentokil Initial, National Australia Group, which owns Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank, and the Cooperative group have all recently announced plans to wield the axe. Yet this is actually an assault on workers' standard of living.

What these companies are actually doing is reducing people's overall remuneration package.

It effectively equates to a wages cut by the back door.

Workers will have a much reduced retirement income or they will have to find the money today to take out extra cover to see them through their latter years.

Last week the fat cats at department store Harrods - a national symbol of excess - became the latest to join the bandwagon.

Staff will instead be offered membership of a defined contribution scheme, under which they, rather than the company, have to shoulder the investment risk.

Harrods blamed the move on the scheme's £111 million deficit, saying continuing with the pension represented an "unacceptable future risk".

A spokesman said: "Longer life expectancy, lower interest rates, higher taxes and low investment returns during the last several years have all contributed to the increased size of funding deficits and the cost of providing future defined benefit pensions."

But these are weasel words.

In the good times many companies in Britain, with an effective go-ahead from Mrs Thatcher, ravaged their pension surpluses and went on extensive pension holidays during which they paid nothing. Yet these surpluses were their insurance to get the funds through the inevitable bad times. Yes, longer life expectancy is an issue, but lower interest rates, higher taxes and low investment returns are simply an excuse.

It is the CBI which has presided over this farce.

It has the nerve to lecture the Government over supposedly over-generous public sector pension commitments, yet it has allowed many gross and greedy member companies to abdicate their responsibilities.

The Government is quite right to have told the CBI where to stick their protests because many relatively poorly paid public sector workers only stay with their jobs for a decent pension when they retire. Now equally poorly paid shopworkers and rat catchers cannot even look forward to that.

Yet, more enlightened companies are prepared to work with their employees to solve pension problems

Last week BAE Systems agreed a way forward with staff that will enable it to keep its scheme open despite its £2.4 billion deficit.

Workers agreed to take responsibility for 40 per cent of any changes in mortality assumptions when calculating future liabilities, and the company will inject at least £600 million.

Yesterday steel group Corus also did a deal with the unions. These issues, with a bit of goodwill, are not insurmountable.