Two years that damn the union leaders

Submitted by AWL on 20 March, 2012 - 3:12

A timeline of how the fight against the Coalition's cuts to public sector pensions has lost momentum, going backwards from March 2012 to May 2010.

20 March 2012: Unite Exec passes a resolution holding out a possibility of a pensions strike in late April. NIPSA Exec votes to call off 28 March strike.

19 March 2012: PCS Exec votes not to strike on 28 March, despite a 72% majority in its survey for a 28 March strike. Instead it says it will "work with other unions to build for co-ordinated national industrial action to take place at the earliest opportunity and before the end of April if possible".

16 March: UCU Exec votes not to strike nationally, but to strike in London alone on 28 March. It had a big majority in its survey for national action.

15 March: EIS (Scottish teachers' union) suspends its plan for striking on 28 March (for which it had a 73% majority in a consultative survey).

14 March: NUT Exec votes not to strike nationally on 28 March, despite a 73% majority in its survey for that action. It does agree to consult London NUT association (branch) secretaries on striking in London. Following the consultation, NUT leaders call a strike in London, and say that strikes in other regions may follow later.

13 March: Unison's health sector, in Scotland, starts a rolling programme of local strikes over pensions. NIPSA (Northern Ireland public sector union) declares that it will strike on 28 March if other unions do.

9 March: Government publishes final revisions of the three big schemes after detailed talks on the terms announced in December.

7 March: Unite health sector Executive, under pressure from full-time officials, votes against striking on 28 March.

10 February: UCU Exec cancels its strike call for 1 March, and decides to survey members for a strike on 28 March.

9 February: NUT and PCS Executives decide to "survey" (not re-ballot) their members for a strike on 28 March. FBU says it will move towards a ballot for action on firefighters' pensions.

26 January: NUT Exec meets again, but still makes no definite plans, instead resolving to "press the case at the meeting with other unions for a joint further day of action in March".

25 January: "Rejectionist" unions meet, reject the 1 March date, but talk of action later in March.

20 January: UCU Executive calls a strike for 1 March.

12 January: NUT Exec votes to reject Government's December terms (more or less, though without using the word "reject"), but defeats a proposal for fresh strikes on pensions.

10 January: Unison's Service Group Executives (more or less) endorse the leadership's acceptance of the Government's December terms.

9 January: Unite local government Executive rejects Government's December terms.

7 January: Cross-union activist conference on pensions called by Left Unity, the leadership faction in PCS. Platform blocks a vote on calls for PCS to plan further strikes.

5 January: Unite health sector Executive unanimously rejects Government's December terms.

2011

20 December: The big local government unions Unison, GMB, and Unite retract a commitment to "suspend" all further action on pensions, because of a provocative letter from government minister Eric Pickles. No union rescinds its signature on the 16 December agreement with the local government employers. Unison and GMB soon restore their commitment to suspend action, but Unite's position remains "retracted".

19 December: Government announces new "final" terms. The main shift is to better "accrual rates" for the health, civil service and teachers' schemes, balanced by a worse method of calculating "career average". Government reveals the local government terms: there will be no or little increase in contributions before 2014, but to balance that the worse overall provision will be introduced in local government earlier than in health or education. Government confirms July 2011 figures for contribution increases from April 2012, with only minor changes. The media report that most unions have accepted the terms. Two unions, PCS and NIPSA, forthrightly reject the terms. Only the big local government unions have signed an actual document. Other unions' positions are varying degrees of "reserved position" or "we'll suspend action, or suspend for now, and consult".

16 December: Unison, Unite, and GMB, the main unions in local government, announced that they have signed a joint document with the employers for a deal to recommend to the Government. They will not yet tell union members what the deal is, because they don't yet know the Government's reaction!

9 December: Unilever workers begin rolling strikes against cuts in their (private-sector) pension scheme.

30 November: An estimated two million workers join a strike called by PCS, NUT, ATL, UCU; the bigger unions Unison, Unite, and GMB; NASUWT; and many smaller unions.

29 November: Government accelerates increase in state pension age (to be 67 by 2026-8, rather than 2034-6).

2 November: Government concedes no immediate contributions increase for the lower-paid and protection (though not from the RPI-to-CPI shift) for workers retiring within the next ten years.

23 September: Local government employers make proposals to the Government for smaller employee contribution increases, and an option for employees to avoid all contribution increase by accepting a worse accrual rate.

14 September: TUC announces 30 November as date for further action.

July: Government announces figures for worker pension contribution increases from April 2012.

30 June: Several hundred thousand workers join a strike called by PCS, NUT, ATL, and UCU.

21 June: Unison general secretary Dave Prentis declares, at his union's conference, that: "We will strike to defend our pensions... A day won't be enough. This coalition won't move with just one day of action... Strike action will need to be sustained..."

17 June: Government minister Danny Alexander says definitely that Government will implement Hutton report (increased contributions, later pension age, shift to career average).

May: PCS, NUT, ATL, and UCU ballot members for strike action in June.

30 April: Unison general secretary Dave Prentis says: "Unison will ballot one million of its members to strike to protect their pensions. This will not be a token skirmish, but a prolonged and sustained war, because this government has declared war on a huge proportion of the population". (But Unison will not ballot until after the summer, telling its activists that delay is necessary to straighten out its membership records).

23 April: NUT conference votes to ballot members for strikes over pensions, the first on 30 June. An amendment from AWL teachers and others to commit the union to a sustained campaign after 30 June is pushed off the agenda (by the mainstream left, not by the union leadership).

April: The Government implements the decision from its 2010 Budget to inflation-adjust pensions in line with the CPI index rather than RPI (on average about 0.8% more). According the Pensions Policy Institute, this cuts the value of pensions by about 25%.

26 March: Big TUC demonstration against cuts. No word from the platform of action on pensions.

17-24 March: Lecturers' union UCU strikes over pensions in older universities (in different regions between 17 and 22 March), and in all universities and colleges (24 March). No other union joins the action.

10 March: A report on pensions, produced for the Government by renegade Labour minister John Hutton, proposes that public-sector pension age should be increased along with the state pension age, to 68 and above, that worker contributions to the schemes be raised, and that the pensions be calculated as a percentage of "career average", not (as with current schemes other than the "new" civil service one) of "final salary". The Government starts negotiations with unions on that basis.

28 January: TUC calls a first meeting of unions "considering action" on pensions. It decides no plans.

2010

30 December: PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka predicts that "by March 26, the date of the big TUC march with a million people on the streets... unions [will] have balloted or [be] balloting for industrial action... followed by mass industrial action" in April. PCS will do nothing along those lines.

20 October: Government declares that 3% more will be taken out of workers' wages in pension contributions as from April 2012.

September-October: Huge strike wave in France against plans to cut pensions there. Little word from British union leaders.

22 June: In the Budget, Government says it will cut inflation-uprating for pensions from RPI to CPI, from April 2011.

20 June: Government gives renegade former Labour minister John Hutton a remit to report on "delivering savings on public service pensions... to contribute towards the reduction of the structural deficit" and reducing the gap "between public service and private sector pension provision", i.e. levelling down public-service pensions towards the low standards dominant in the private sector after decades of trashing pensions.

15 June: Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg says that "gold-plated public sector pension pots" are "unfair and unaffordable".

6 May: Tories come out ahead in general election, and soon form a coalition government with Lib Dems.

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