Hackney braced for strike as unions show their teeth

Public sector union Unison has announced strike action over pensions for Wednesday 30 November.

Nurses, teachers, social services staff, fire fighters and many other professions will be be involved in the nationwide action.

Hackney’s Unison Branch Secretary Matthew Waterfall anticipates widespread participation by 2,500 members who work in Hackney. This will bring disruption to many people in the borough who depend on the services the council provides, yet Matthew stressed: “life and limb cover will be in place.”

“This is not a dispute with the council,” he said. The disagreement is over the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). It is the largest pension scheme in the UK, the fourth largest in the world and has assets of some £165 billion.

It is a funded scheme with pension benefits paid through income generated from investments.

Waterfall refuted the widely-held view that public sector workers get a better pensions deal than their counterparts in the private sector: “The pensions are not gold-plated by any means,” he said. The average annual pension for a Unison member is just £4,200 a year, and the average pension paid to a woman is £2,870. Approximately 75% of LGPS members are women.

A pension review by Lord Hutton, published in March this year, recommended to the Government that public sector workers should lose their final-salary pension schemes, which should be replaced by career-average schemes.

The review also recommended that contributions should be increased and that the normal pension age for members of the LGPS should be the same as the State Pension age.

Up to three million public sector workers could take action across the whole of the UK over the controversial proposals, as some unions are still in the process of balloting their members over the issue.

If these ballots result in a ‘yes’ vote, it will not be only the work of local authorities that is affected. The Association of Head Teachers, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists, and the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists are also balloting their members on strike action.

In September this year, Brendan Barber, the head of the TUC warned that the action anticipated on November 30 would bring “the biggest trade union mobilisation for a generation.”

Other union leaders are warning of troubled times ahead. The GMB have warned that the action against the Government pension reforms could well spread into next summer, affecting the London Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.