CALL UNITED ACTION - NO DIVIDE AND RULE!

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CALL UNITED ACTION - NO DIVIDE AND RULE!

We the undersigned UNISON members, call upon UNISON's leaders not to allow the Tory-led Government to undermine the unity of the public service trade unions in the fight to defend our pensions.

We recognise that the differences between the various pension schemes may lead to different proposals in different sectors. For example, there is no support from the Local Government employers for increased contributions in the LGPS for fear of massive opt-outs wrecking the scheme's long-term viability, and we now know that the Secretary of State for Health has expressed opposition to the proposals from the Treasury.

There are, however, common issues across all schemes, including the switch to the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) to uprate pensions, which will cut the value of all our pensions by 15%, and Hutton's threat to exclude private sector workers from public sector schemes, which would make privatisation much more profitable and threaten the pensions of hundreds of thousands of trade unionists whose jobs would be privatised. The Government's apparent refusal to abandon its plan to scrap the Fair Deal for Pensions is no doubt closely linked to its White Paper strategy of extending the scope and accelerating the pace of privatisation.

As the Local Government Service Group Executive (SGE) noted in a motion adopted at its 26 May meeting, the original proposals left "no room for doubt that [they] are based not on any need to make change to promote the long-term viability of the schemes but on an ideological drive to undermine public sector pensions". The SGE motion further pointed to "the need to resist the pensions proposals across the board rather than relying on scheme by scheme negotiations".

Aside from the fact the Government is now weaker, we do not believe that the situation has fundamentally changed since 26 May. Even if a moratorium on increased contributions for LGPS members is on offer, a number of very detrimental changes are still very much on the table. To recap these include:
Phased rise in the retirement age in step with the increase in the state retirement age (work longer and pay more)
Move to a career average scheme with the virtual certainty of a worse accrual rate than at present (get less)
No shift on the switch from RPI to CPI, with the resulting erosion of 15% (+) in lifetime value of pension (get less), and
Scrapping of the Fair Deal as a spur to further privatisation and outsourcing.

In the absence of cast-iron guarantees from the Government to abandon any of its key attacks across all of the schemes the move to "scheme-specific" negotiations is a mistake. To move now to scheme-specific negotiations without having used our unity between unions and across schemes to secure far more substantial concessions has wasted an opportunity.

Instead of further delay around the question of a ballot because of the move to scheme-specific talks, we call upon UNISON to back early united public sector strike action to secure gains for all public servants, in all unions and all schemes. We further call for UNISON to take the lead in setting a proposed date for the commencement of united strike action across the public services to defend all our pension schemes.

Signed all in a person capacity
George Binette Camden Branch Secretary
Jon Rogers UNISON NEC and Lambeth UNISON
Marshajane Thompson Havering UNISON
John Mcloughlin LG SGE Tower Hamlets UNISON
Andrew Berry Islington UNISON
Terry Conway Community SGE and Housing Associations
Kate Ahrens Leicestershire Health
Brian Gardner Hackney UNISON Branch Chair
Sean Fox NJC committee and Haringey UNISON
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