Unite members vote in favour of pensions strike action

Unite, which represents 1.5 million public sector workers, is the latest to commit to a coordinated 'day of action' planned by the Trade Union Congress (TUC) for 30 November.

The National Association of Probation Officers (Napo) also announced that 83% of its members had voted for national strike action for only the third time in the union's one hundred year history.

Unite said that its positive vote added further pressure to the government to rethink its public sector pension plans. The union said that 75% of its members on a turnout of 31% voted in favour of strike action in its three main aggregate ballots of health, civil service and local authority workers.

Members employed with Mersey Tunnels, Greater Manchester Transport, Glasgow City Council, Scottish Water, West Midlands Police Authority, Northern Ireland bus services, Cardiff buses, the British Film Institute, the British Museum and South Yorkshire Police also voted in favour in single employer ballots.

"Yet again public sector workers are telling the government that 'enough is enough'. They have endured wages cuts, rising living costs and horrific job losses as this government forces the less well of in this country to pay for the sins of the elite. They are not prepared to stomach this attack on their pensions too," said Unite general secretary Len McCluskey.

"On November 30, we fully expect millions of public sector workers and their supporters to show their disgust at the government's plans. If the government seriously wants to avert a long dispute and heal the divisions is it causing, it needs to get back round the table with some sensible plans for solving the problems it alone has caused," McCluskey said.

Research from Unite shows that 12 million people, or one in five of the population, will be affected by the changes.

The TUC, which is coordinating the national day of action, said the Government was putting a "three-way squeeze" on public service pensions. Government plans to increase public sector pension contributions by 3.2% by 2015 while wages are frozen across the public sector amount to a "special tax that will only be paid by public sector staff", it has said.

It has also claimed that proposed increases to the state pension age will result in employees working longer for a smaller pension, after the Government changed the measure of inflation in public sector pensions from the retail prices index (RPI) to the consumer prices index (CPI) in April this year.

Last month six public sector unions, including Unite, began a legal challenge to the change, which they claim is prohibited under social security legislation that requires the Government to adjust benefits according to the "general level of price increases" each year. The formula for calculating CPI also includes the spending behaviour of people who might switch to cheaper alternatives as prices increase, including pensioners and students in halls of residence.

Because CPI inflation is around 1.2% lower on average than RPI inflation the loss to existing public sector pensioners will be around 15%, the unions have claimed.

Earlier this month the UK Government amended its pensions offer to public sector workers. However it did not address concerns around the change to the measure of inflation, and admitted that most workers would still have to work longer and pay more.