Trade union members have responded overwhelmingly and voted to support the TUC Day of Action on November 30. Across all jobs and grades public sector workers will take strike action to defend their pensions.
Unions not affiliated to the TUC, for example the Royal College of Nursing, are gearing up for a ballot early next year and will support lunch time events across the UK.
Government ministers keep throwing ‘googlies’ in a bid to dampen morale. Cabinet Office minister Frances Maude’s idea of a 15 minute protest was met with derision.
Prior to this, the spin put on the situation by Treasury minister Danny Alexander's spin was tantamount to misleading the Commons. His claim that people will be protected from detriment if they retire within ten years of April 2012 is simply wrong.
A typical nurse will by 2015 pay an additional £65 per month in contributions. Over a 25 year retirement, she will suffer a reduction of about 11 per cent in benefits due to the switch from Retail Price Index to the lower Consumer Price Index.
Some commentators have pointed to the percentage of union members voting in the ballots, but Danny Alexander got his seat with 28 per cent of his constituency vote.
Union negotiators are still working flat out to try and make sense of the government’s proposals tabled a couple of weeks ago but it is too little, too late to halt the action.
One in five of the UK population is either drawing a public sector pension or expects to. Most will retire on about £5,600 a year although the figure for local government workers is an average of £3,000.
Much is said about taxpayers shouldering the burden of public sector pensions. This ignores the £20 billion subsidy in tax relief for private sector schemes, the fact that government invests in public sector pension funds and that the existing schemes are good value and sustainable.
Far too many private sector workers have no occupational pension at all and many schemes went under with workers losing all that they had saved in contributions for their future retirement.
That’s why unions lobbied Labour and campaigned successfully for protection and then backdated compensation as well as for the restoration to the link between state pension and earnings.
Not a penny of the tax levied in increased contributions from public sector workers will benefit private sector workers. None of the one million unemployed young people will be better off, in fact quite the opposite.
The united voice of trade union members will drown out the calls from the right to slacken health and safety measures, ease up on regulations that protect workers from dismissal and even stricter anti-union legislation.
Our message will be heard on November 30, but whether government is listening remains to be seen.
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