Vote YES in Public Service Pension Strike Ballot: Fair Pensions for all

Dear Members

Vote YES in Public Service Pension Strike Ballot
Look out for the ballot papers in your post during the next few days asking you to vote for industrial action.

We are asking you to vote YES since the proposed changes are just not fair.

The pensions dispute affects thousands of UNISON members in community and voluntary organisations. This is about your future, about the sort of life you want when you stop working.

Hundreds of employers outside the public sector participate in the Local Government and NHS pension schemes – so that employees transferring into them from the public sector can remain in the schemes.

As a result, thousands of UNISON Community service group members are affected by the changes to public sector pensions that are being proposed by ministers. The proposals will mean those members will pay more for their pension, if they earn more than £15,000 a year. Most of them will work much longer. And changes already imposed mean their pension is already worth less and they will receive less when they retire. 

Not a penny of this major increase in contributions will go towards improving the pension scheme. Instead it will go to the Treasury to pay for the excesses of the bankers. 

The proposed changes will harm Community UNISON members just as much as those in the public sector, and we say enough is enough. 

UNISON is therefore balloting thousands of members in community and voluntary organisations and housing associations, so that they too can have their say. (It may be that some members who are not in a relevant pension scheme have been included in the ballot. This is ok – not every member within any employer has to be affected for all members within that employer to be balloted on that issue.)

Vote YES, and make it clear to ministers that what they are proposing is unacceptable. 

Yours faithfully

John Gray

Branch Secretary