Nurses, teaching assistants, social workers, dinner ladies and paramedics are lining up at the picket lines to protect their pensions during the biggest strike in living memory.
UNISON has said from the start that we want to reach a negotiated settlement, and that still stands. We were willing to take part in scheme specific talks, right up until 30 November and we are still committed to continuing negotiations. Action is a last resort, but after eight months of negotiations we still have no firm offer to put to a single public sector worker.
The government is trying to paint a picture of macho union leaders squaring up for a fight, but their aggressive policies are hitting women hard and turning them off. Applications to join UNISON have jumped a massive 126% since the result of the union's ballot for strike action was announced. An overwhelming 81% of these applications have come from women - reflecting exactly who women are turning to for support.
In fact the majority of our members are low paid women in the caring professions - they did not take the decision to strike lightly. They go to work day in, day out, to make their communities better places in which to live and work. Indeed, with pay frozen at a time of stubbornly high inflation, and with Christmas just around the corner, these women can ill afford to lose a day's wages. Their vote shows the colour of their anger over ministers' pensions plans to make them work longer and pay more, all for less in their retirement, coming on on top of heavy job and service cuts.
Public sector workers have already been stung by promises made in Parliament that were never delivered. In his first Emergency Budget, George Osborne promised public sector workers earning less than £21,000 a £250 pay boost - easing the pain of the pay freeze. But for low paid local government workers, this money has never materialised. They've been stuck on the pay freeze for two years, which could stretch to three, stretching family budgets to the limit.
The pensions proposals come on top of this - tough when we know there is no public sector pensions crisis - only four years ago, unions negotiated new schemes to make them affordable and sustainable for the long term. The schemes include a cap and share arrangement in health, so that any increase in costs would have to be borne by employees. The reforms also included a higher retirement age of 65, and other measures including higher contributions from members of between 5 and 8%.
These reforms have meant that the cost of public sector pensions, as a proportion of GDP, will fall, costs have been reduced even more by the switch to using CPI rather than RPI to calculate the annual increase in pensions payments. Both the health and local government schemes are in good shape, with billions more coming in than has to be paid out in pensions every year. The local government schemes also provide a huge boost to the private sector, its funds are worth £140 billion, and they own 1.75% of the UK's top FTSE companies.
Under the proposals, the low paid will receive only just enough to keep them above the threshold for means tested benefits when they do retire. The average pension in local government is £3,800 a year, but for women, it's less than £2,800 - just £56 a week. More than half of women pensioners in the NHS receive a pension of less than £3,500 a year.
The real pensions scandal is that two thirds of private sector workers do not get a single penny from their employers towards their pension, whilst top bosses award themselves generous pensions. It is in no one's interest to see workers in the public or private sector living in poverty and relying on state benefits when they retire - that is just storing up more trouble for the future. We do not believe a penny of the money raised will go towards pensions - this is nothing but a hardship tax on public sector workers to pay down the deficit.