Keep up the fight for local government pensions!

Avid readers of this blog (both of them) will remember that I reported on the first of UNISON’s Regional Pensions Briefings in the South East Region. I have now heard from the Yorkshire and Humberside Region as follows;

Delegates had a lot of questions and expressed a good deal of concern and dissatisfaction from members over the loss of momentum on protection of retirement at 60. When the top table tried to cut this off in order to split us up into workshops to discuss 'why is protection important?' there was, basically, a rebellion - we refused.

They were forced to re-jig the agenda to give more time for debate and feedback and more discussion of how to revive the campaign for full protection. Apparently this will re-shape the remaining Regional briefings, and I suspect there'll be some feedback to Mabledon Place about stroppy Yorkshire folk too.. Don't know if they'll want to come up here again!

UNISON members in the Greater London Region will be meeting tomorrow for the Regional Pensions Briefing. I’ll miss this as I will be on the beach.

It does seem to me that as well as asking why we should accept any of the Government’s options for the future of our pension scheme, we do need to ensure that we are continuing to fight for the full protection which a million workers struck for on 28 March.

I look forward to hearing how the event tomorrow goes!