What price a pension?

NURSERY nurses. Teaching assistants. Home care workers. Dinnerladies. Environmental health officials. Road gritters. Backroom staff at police and fire stations.

These, and many like them, are the unsung heroes of our society. While they don't have the high profile of teachers, doctors or police officers, their work is essential.

Quite how essential we will find out on Tuesday, when they are due to walk out for the day.

This is a very 21st century dispute. The big strikes of the Seventies and early Eighties centred on pay and jobs. At the heart of this dispute is a much more modern problem: pensions.

"Nationally the employers, with the support of the Government, are proposing a number of changes to the local government pension scheme LPGS," said Ben Drake, branch secretary of York City UNISON.

"The main change we are concerned about is the abolition of the 85-year rule.

"In theory under the LGPS the normal retirement age is 65. Under the 85-year rule, if your years of service and your age add up to 85 you can go at 60 and still get the full pension.

"That is any staff who have worked for 25 years and reached the age of 60 - which covers most of our members. People tend to stick in local government. It's the public service ethos."

His members, and those of the myriad of other public sector unions involved in the dispute, are furious that this benefit is being axed.

"It's a contributory scheme. We have all paid into it. Our members have been paying into this scheme, most of them, ever since they signed up and started working for the council.

"They put in part of their wage. They did so on a set of terms. To change these rules seems to us to be moving the goalposts."

Further infuriating the affected workers is the fact that teachers, civil servants and health workers have been given guaranteed lifetime protection from changes to their pensions scheme by the Government.

"You only need to talk to council workers to see how angry they are about this. There are people who have said to me in the past that they would never strike about anything, but they are going to strike over this."

As is characteristic of industrial disputes, the unions and the bosses blame one another for the breakdown in negotiations. In this case the bosses are represented by the Local Government Association (LGA), which works closely with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

"The changes to local government staff pensions are both needed and necessary," says Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, chairman of the LGA.

"Unless action is taken in the very near future, the cost to individual council tax payers and local government because people are living longer will continue to rise."

That is the nub of it, agrees Ken Green, York council's head of human resources.

"From City of York Council's point of view, this is a national dispute," he said. "In that respect we are relatively neutral.

"There's a need for change in terms of the scheme. I don't think that's disputed, even by the trades unions nationally.

"Because of pressures, largely due to people's increased longevity, the pension scheme is running a risk of substantial deficit."

The exact deficit is hard to pin down, because it changes with the stock market. But one survey put it at £20 million in York.

And there is a key difference between the local government pension scheme and those applied to teachers, health staff and civil servants, Mr Green said.

"The local government pension scheme is a funded scheme. Because it is a funded scheme it has to have sufficient funds to meet its obligations.

"Other public sector schemes are in fact guaranteed by the Government."

That means there are four ways the local government scheme deficit can be reduced:

People work to a later age

The employee pays more into the scheme

The employer pays more into the scheme, placing an extra burden on the taxpayer

The Government provides funding, again from the public purse.

The rule of 85, says Ken Green, "brings with it a significant burden because people can take their benefits at a relatively early age".

There is local discretion as to when people can retire under the rule. "The City of York Council scheme would let people go in certain circumstances at the age of 58 if they meet the rule of 85, with no loss of pensions benefit.

"In other authorities it's substantially less than 58.

"The local discretions are very rigidly applied within City of York Council because this is an authority which has a history of managing its resources very tightly, very effectively. We don't have the luxury of throwing money at problems that perhaps some other authorities have."

Nevertheless, he has sympathy with those who would be affected by changes to the rule of 85.

"I understand people who have spent 20 or 30 years with the expectation that they get to a certain point and are able to retire, and then this benefit is suddenly taken away from them, is a very hard pill to swallow.

"People will think there's a rather late move of the goalposts which gives them concern."

The unions and the LGA seem as far apart as ever, so it looks likely that Tuesday's strike will go ahead.

So how much disruption can we expect?

"I am confident we will get our members out," said Mr Drake. "Not everyone in the council is a union member.

"We are confident that council workplaces will be closed. They're not going to have enough staff to run schools. Our feeling is it would be advisable for schools to close for the day. Without the support staff it's going to be difficult to run them properly."

He believes his members have widespread sympathy. Although he understands that people in the private sector with their own pension problems "might feel a degree of resentment" about their demand to retire at 60, UNISON "had always argued that the state pension age should be set at 60", and would hope that the general public would back their cause.

Mr Green urges council staff to go to work on Tuesday. "We would prefer to be able to deliver services as normal. We want to be able to deliver the best services we can to the people of York.

"We would encourage people to work as normal wherever possible."

In the strike ballots, about 80 per cent voted yes - but the turnover was only 28 per cent.

"The ones who feel strongly about it most certainly feel very strongly," Mr Green admitted. "They will undoubtedly undertake action on Tuesday of next week, and they may influence some people who might otherwise have worked as normal."

He chairs the council group drawing up contingency plans to offset the disruption. It is negotiating with the unions to keep "life and limb" services going, such as residential elderly homes.

"We are working to ensure that we can maintain as many services as possible.

"There's no doubt if there is a day of action next Tuesday some services will be affected, and some services won't be able to be delivered because of people taking that action," he said, apologising to those who would be affected.

It is hard for the council to predict the scale of the difficulties in advance. Council workers are being asked if they are likely to take part but "we're not going to twist their arm to tell us".

If they can give out advance information on the closure of schools or other services they will.

Tuesday is unlikely to be the end of the matter. Without an early settlement, we could be looking at more strikes in what has already been dubbed "the spring of discontent".

Local government pension scheme

UNISON says the average woman's LGPS pension is £31 a week and 75 per cent of all LGPS pensions are less than £96 a week

The Local Government Association calculates that the unions' demands on the 85-year rule would cost an extra £6 billion over 15 years

The walkout could be the UK's biggest industrial action since the General Strike of 1926

The unions which voted for strike action were UNISON; the TGWU; the GMB; Amicus; the NIPSA; the NAPO; the AEP; the NUT; UCATT; and the CYWU

Workers for privatised public services have also backed strike action, including bus drivers in Leeds, workers at Leeds-Bradford airport and toll collectors on the Humber bridge

If the strike goes ahead, UNISON is due to hold a rally on Tuesday outside the Guildhall in York at 12.30pm

Updated: 10:03 Friday, March 24, 2006