The Credo, the Community, and the Pensioners

Just before Christmas 2025, Joaquin Duato — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Johnson & Johnson — posted this on LinkedIn:

“Giving back is at the heart of what Johnson & Johnson does.

J&J CareCommunity, our social impact platform, unites our global efforts in connecting communities to care and supporting nurses and health workers.

This year, tens of thousands of employees dedicated their time and talent to make a difference through J&J CareCommunity, strengthening the communities where we live and work.

In this season of giving, our leadership team spent time assembling mental health coping kits for Empower Somerset, a local New Jersey non-profit organization that connects young people to services and resources that support healthy lifestyles and mental well-being.

But giving isn’t a seasonal event for us. It is part of our company’s culture. This year, I joined teams across our company in efforts to give back to our communities.”1[1]Joaquin Duato, LinkedIn post, December 2025. “Giving back is at the heart of what Johnson & Johnson does… This year, tens of thousands of employees dedicated their time and talent to make a difference through J&J CareCommunity… giving isn’t a seasonal event for us. It is part of our company’s culture.”

It is a warm, sincere-sounding post, and there is no reason to doubt that the volunteering it describes happened, or that the people involved meant it. The Association does not dispute any of it. We simply want to put it next to something else Mr Duato’s company has said — not on LinkedIn, but in writing, to its own pensioners, in two different countries.

The Community Closest to Home

Johnson & Johnson’s Credo, written by Robert Wood Johnson in 1943, opens with the company’s responsibility to patients. Its second paragraph is about employees:

“We are responsible to our employees who work with us throughout the world. They must have a sense of security, fulfilment and purpose in their jobs. Compensation must be fair and adequate, and working conditions clean, orderly and safe.”2[2]Johnson & Johnson, Our Credo, jnj.com/our-credo. Written by Robert Wood Johnson, 1943.

The Credo does not say this responsibility ends on the day an employee retires. It does not distinguish between an active employee and a pensioner who spent thirty years earning that pension. For the people this article is about, the company they gave their working lives to is, in a very direct sense, the community closest to home — not a charity it supports once a year, but the institution that holds their retirement income in trust.

Here is what that group of people has actually experienced, in two countries.

The United Kingdom

Members of the J&J UK Group Retirement Plan with pension built up before April 1997 have received no discretionary increase on that portion of their pension since January 2014 — over twelve years. The 2014 increase was itself a periodic catch-up (the fourth in a series since 2002); even on that schedule, a further catch-up would have been due years ago. The scheme holds a surplus of £484 million (133% funded, 31 March 2025). The employer has paid £nil toward members’ benefit funding since the scheme closed to accrual in April 2023. Full detail and sourcing is set out in the Association’s other articles, “The Surplus Was Not Built by Good Management Alone” and “How We Were All Lulled Into a False Sense of Security.”

The Netherlands and Belgium

The same pattern exists in a separate J&J pension fund, governed under separate (Belgian) law, for former Dutch employees. According to Pensioen Pro — the principal Dutch pensions trade publication — J&J Pension Fund OFP has not indexed the pensions of approximately 3,850 Dutch pensioners and deferred members since 2007, with one exception: a 6% increase applied on 1 January 2023.3[3]‘Fonds Johnson & Johnson onderbedeelt inactieven,’ Pensioen Pro, 13 March 2024. pensioenpro.nl. Reports the fund’s 152% coverage ratio (1 Jan 2023 and 1 Jan 2024) and the absence of indexation for ~3,850 Dutch pensioners and deferred members since 2007, with one exception (6% on 1 January 2023). The fund is well-funded throughout this period: its coverage ratio stood at 152% on both 1 January 2023 and 1 January 2024.

A group of six former participants and pensioners — including a former chairman of the fund, Wijnand de Valk, and two former board members, Theo Elsendoorn and Gerard Elsinghorst — formed a “sounding board group” to press the fund on the lack of indexation. Mr Elsinghorst has gone further: in 2024 alone he organised three demonstrations outside Johnson & Johnson sites in the Netherlands, at Amersfoort and Leiden.4[4]‘Foutje Achmea: deelnemers krijgen brief van verkeerde pensioenfonds,’ Pensioen Pro, 18 April 2024. pensioenpro.nl. Confirms ongoing demonstrations by J&J pension fund participants at company locations, organised by Gerard Elsinghorst.

The campaign has attracted political support. Jimmy Dijk, leader of the Dutch Socialist Party (SP), visited Mr Elsinghorst in person and the party has publicly backed the pensioners’ cause:

“Not pension administrators far away, but pension scheme members themselves should be able to decide what happens with their pension money.” — Jimmy Dijk, SP leader5[5]SP (Socialistische Partij), ‘SP steunt (oud)-medewerkers Johnson en Johnson,’ sp.nl. sp.nl. SP leader Jimmy Dijk publicly backed the campaign for indexation.

The Dutch government has also responded to questions about the case. The minister responsible, Mr Vijlbrief, said he could well understand that former participants and pensioners of Johnson & Johnson are disappointed about their indexation prospects, while noting he had received no indication that the arrangements fell outside the legal framework that applied at the time the fund moved to Belgium in 2015.6[6]Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment (Netherlands), response of Minister Vijlbrief, as reported in ‘Indexatie-afspraken bij buitenlandse pensioeninstelling: hoe zit het?’, Salaris Vanmorgen, salarisvanmorgen.nl. In other words: lawful, and disappointing. The same two words that describe the UK position.

In one small, almost absurd footnote to the story, pensioners briefly believed their long campaign had succeeded: the fund’s administrator mistakenly sent J&J pensioners a letter intended for an entirely different pension fund, promising a generous indexation arrangement. The excitement did not last; the letter had gone to the wrong scheme. The episode says nothing about J&J’s intentions, but it says a great deal about how much Dutch J&J pensioners wanted, and still want, to believe good news might finally be coming.

Two Countries, One Pattern

These are two separate legal entities, governed by two separate jurisdictions, with no formal connection beyond a shared sponsoring employer. The Association is not suggesting any co-ordinated decision links the two positions. What we are pointing to is simpler: a recognisable pattern, repeating itself wherever a J&J pension fund has become well-funded and its retired members have stopped costing the company anything to maintain.

Giving Back, Closer to Home

None of this is intended to diminish the volunteering Mr Duato described in his December post. Assembling mental health kits for a New Jersey non-profit is a good thing to do, and the employees who gave their time deserve credit for it.

But “giving back” as a description of corporate culture sits awkwardly next to two long-running, well-documented situations in which the company’s own former employees — people who spent careers building the surplus the company now manages — have had to organise sounding-board groups, write to ministers, and stand outside company buildings with placards simply to ask that their pensions keep pace with the cost of living.

The Credo says compensation must be fair and adequate, and that employees must have a sense of security. It does not say this stops applying once someone has retired. The Association’s ask is modest, and it applies equally to both countries: that the same culture of giving back Mr Duato describes to nurses, health workers, and a New Jersey youth charity be extended, with at least equal seriousness, to the company’s own pensioners — the community that built the company in the first place.