The General Secretary has reported to the UNISON NEC about continuing discussions in relation to the Local Government Pension Scheme. It is clear that the limit of our ambition is now to secure protection of the pension rights only of those members who will be aged 60 or over in 2020.
Phil Woolas promised ahead of the Special Local Government Conference that there would be consultation on this modest improvement in the current protection arrangements. However, there is now an “informal” consultation process ahead of any formal statutory consultation.
We are invited to blame the evil “civil servants” for this. We need to keep up the pressure to get the formal statutory consultation – the General Secretary clearly hopes that the Government will commence consultation ahead of our Conference in a couple of weeks.
The consultative ballot agreed at the Special Conference is likely to commence at the same time as the formal consultation on extending protection to 2020 on the basis that this is the best we can get from negotiation. However the ballot will go ahead with or without the formal consultation in spite of the fact that the position seems if anything to be slightly worse than it was in March.
This is not at all what we set out for when we took strike action last year.
Local Government NEC member Glenn Kelly is expressing the disappointment which many members feel about the outcome of this dispute.
My battery is dying so this is the end of my experiment in “live blogging”…
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