Coalition relishes showdown with unions, claims John Swinney
John Swinney has claimed that the Westminster government are 'relishing' a showdonw with the unions. Photo: Ian Rutherford
DAVID Cameron and his ministers are “relishing the prospect” of a showdown with unions as a day of strike chaos looms on Wednesday, John Swinney has claimed.
Scotland’s finance secretary accused the coalition government of a “naked cash grab” with its proposed general levy on pension contributions.
Meanwhile, business leaders have warned that the biggest general strike in almost 30 years will have “significant costs” to the economy.
Schools are set to close and hospital services will be dramatically cut during the 24-hour walkout by up to two million workers across the UK, including 300,000 in Scotland. Airlines have been asked to cut the number of passengers they fly to the UK’s busiest airports.
Public-sector workers, including firefighters, school dinner ladies, social workers, hospital cleaners and nurses, will all take part in the first nationwide strike for 25 years over changes to pension arrangements.
The Scottish Government is opposed to the changes in pension provision, but ministers were effectively forced into adopting them north of the Border after the Treasury threatened to cut Holyrood’s budget if the SNP did not comply.
Referring to the general levy on pension contributions, Mr Swinney said: “It is a naked cash grab by UK ministers, driven not by the need for sensible and fair long-term pensions reforms but instead driven by deficit reduction targets. What is deeply regrettable is the fact that UK ministers, from the Prime Minister downwards, actually appear to be relishing the prospect of strike action and confrontation with the trade unions.”
He urged UK ministers to take action which could help avert the strike and the “very significant disruption” it would cause to ordinary people.
“Members of the public right across Scotland will have their daily routines affected by the action that is planned,” he said.
David Watt, chief executive of the Institute of Directors, said there “won’t be a great deal of public support” for the strikers. He said: “The forecasts of delays of 12 hours for people coming into Heathrow are absolutely terrifying. The fact that schools are closed causes virtually all businesses significant problems, so there is a real concern. There is a genuine cost to it.”
There have been estimates of a £500 million blow to the economy, but Mr Watt said it was “impossible to estimate” the impact.
A war of words raged between union leaders and UK ministers yesterday over who was to blame for the deadlock. Chancellor George Osborne said the current offer was a “good deal”.
He said: “I’m trying to give them a good decent pension for many, many years to come – much better than you could get if you were in the private sector these days.”
Trades Union Congress (TUC) general secretary Brendan Barber said the government should pause and reflect on how it had managed to “alienate its entire workforce”, while a senior minister urged nurses, teachers and civil servants to find out for themselves what the government’s reforms meant for their pensions.
Despite last-minute pleas from the government to call off the strike, unions pressed on with arrangements for marches, rallies, picketing and protests to be held across the UK.
Mr Barber said: “This will be the biggest strike for a generation. The government has managed to alienate its entire workforce. Even health service staff, who are very reluctant to strike, will be leaving their workplaces, although they have ensured proper emergency cover.
“Ministers must take notice of the strength of feeling of its workforce.”
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander denied union charges that the government was planning a “race to the bottom” on pensions, saying that “quite the opposite” was true.
He said: “I firmly believe that public-service workers deserve the very best pensions. That’s why we are making sure they remain so generous.”
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said it was union bosses who were “wilfully misrepresenting” the government’s position.
The scale of disruption set to be caused by the strike became clearer when it was revealed that thousands of NHS operations and appointments were being cancelled and rescheduled because of action by NHS staff, from nurses to radiographers.
Increasing numbers of parents were told that their children’s schools would close, while the government has refused to rule out the army being brought in to guard Britain’s borders when UK Border Agency staff join the walkout.
The government is continuing to insist that a “generous” new offer was made to union leaders three weeks ago in an effort to resolve hostilities. Ministers say that they are still waiting for a proper response.
Speculation has also increased that strike laws could be strengthened as a result of the dispute, and that the latest pensions offer could be withdrawn if there is no deal soon.
The mass action has been triggered by UK government proposals to bring the public-sector retirement age in line with the new state pension age of 66, rather than the current 60, by 2020.
The proposals include a rise in employee contributions of 3 per cent, as public-sector pay remains frozen and with plans to link pension-pot payments to a lower rate of inflation.
The Scottish Government has previously asked the Treasury to delay an increase in public-sector contributions until a pay freeze was lifted.
That prompted a warning from Mr Alexander that every month’s delay in implementing the increase would lead to an £8.4m reduction in the Scottish Government’s budget.
General secretary of the Scottish TUC, Grahame Smith, said there were no direct talks scheduled to resolve the dispute.
He said: “Negotiations aren’t ongoing. The last time the government spoke to the trades unions was on 2 November.”
Brian Strutton, national officer of the GMB, said: “Only a last-minute breakthrough in negotiations can stop the strike, but that isn’t going to happen if we are not even meeting. I think the public can work out that increasingly wild government statements to the media while refusing to talk to us face-to-face tells its own story.”
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Comments
There are 348 comments to this article
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Anagach
Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at 11:29 PM347 BorderReiverReturns --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your missing the point. Tax is not a pension contribution. A pension used to be built up as part of pay - i.e. by the employer, in some cases thats the Government. In most of the industrial world thats still the case. In the UK companies have been freed from paying a pension and now the Government is looking to avoid it, the burden has fallen on employees - out of existing salary. Its a 20-30% effective pay cut by removal of benefit. And this process was started in the 1980s.
BorderReiverReturns
Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at 02:54 PMJust to set some context around final salary schemes and how much is required to pay them out - #154, this is particularly for you and your 'you only get back some of your money unless you live to 200' comment. I have no political axe to grind on this one so please, no cybernat, unionist or whatever tags! If I start work at 20 now, earn £20k increasing at 1% per annum (for the sake of argument), paying 20% tax (don't have time to do the allowancethreshold thing but means I'm overfunding!) and ALL my tax goes into a pension pot earning 2% per year (so no losses at all) AND I pay 6% (quite happy to change this if someone in the public sector tells me the right rate!) of my gross salary into the same pot, I would accrue a pension pot of approx £374,000. I work 40 years, retire at 60 on a salary of approx £29,500 so get 40 60ths as a pension, approx £19,700. My pension pot, assuming it still grows at 2% a year, lasts till I'm 84, admittedly greater than the current national average of 78 (male) but this is 40 years in the future, so expect that gap to have closed significantly. So, for a public service worker in a final salary scheme, unless ALL of your tax goes directly into a pension pot, the numbers just don't add up any more. Things are slightly better from a funding perspective if a career average salary is used but only by a couple of years. Yes, there will be excess funding from members who die early and from built up reserves, but these will not last forever. The sad fact is that if we workers want to retire on a reasonable pension, whether from the public or private sector, contributions have to be found from somewhere and we don't have access to a magic bail out fund like some.... Note, this post is not a tacit agreement with the current situation over executive pay either - they get too much and everyone else gets too little - but that's not changed much in the last millenium!
Anagach
Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at 11:53 AMThis seems like the second blow in a one-two. Accutarial advice is that to retire on 66% pay after 40 years you need to invest around 20%-30% of base salary every year. In final pensions schemes the company paid 15-25% and the staff 0-10%. Then came the bad old 80s and the great liberalisation of pensions - companies could ditch their schemes and pay the minimum 4.3% contribution - some 20% less than needed to provide a decent pension. Schemes closed and the private system moved the burden on to staff to find the money. Now the Government wants to do the same with the state pension schemes. Companies gained an advantage over their European (pensioned) competition, the UK staff gained a retirement of poverty.
Brit-free
Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 12:23 AMnaw Daniel , apart from the fact that i dont recognise your analysis of how the nationalists are advancing their tactics , i think your well attested dislike of nationalism makes you a sucker for your own ingrained stereotypes of what nationalism entails ...i dont blame anything or anyone without consideration of the facts ...who is blaming the Poles ? give me their names and i'll have a word ...i probably didnt read the article with great care but who is the " old man" we are supposed to be condemning ? ..ah but ..then it turns out he's a labourite ....with whom you might have noticed we nationalists are engaged in a death struggle ....Daniel i cant hope to engage you in a rational discussion of a constitutional aspiration which you have already discounted as regressive per se ...i fail to see what you gain from this ..my argument is with unionism ....not an ideology ....a constitutional arrangement .that i and others wish to change , not a group of people whose philosophy i wish to suppress or persecute
Kinghob
Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 12:09 AMThe cynical labour msp's are merely trying to hijack the demonstration against pension cuts by those on strike this wednesday, a strike against the economic cuts labour created and the tories absolutely relish in dealing with..........and the tories will ignore this one day of protest against the pension grab. They'll look for more disruption and hope to gain public opinion, at least in England. Whether this works or not, it will disrupt our lives and cause pain.------------------------------------------ The Labour MSP's should be at the motion on wednesday supporting the strike, this being debated in the Scottish Parliament..............instead they will choose to showboat and give out their rather pseudo working class labour credentials (!) on the 30th November to a genuine concerned audience of thousands of people from all sections of Scottish voting intentions..
brownlie, The Master deliverus The Answer
Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 12:00 AMNo MP or MSP is fit to criticise any public sector or private sector pension scheme. ==================================================== When it comes to gold-plated pensions, these guys and gals have it licked.
brownlie, The Master deliverus The Answer
Monday, November 28, 2011 at 11:44 PMtamdundee, =================================================== http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2010/10/11/state-subsidy-to-private-pensions/
brownlie, The Master deliverus The Answer
Monday, November 28, 2011 at 11:35 PM326 Rufus T Firefly Monday, November 28, 2011 at 09:03 PM Posts 325 -319 seem to be from the same person! ======================================================== What is your point, caller?
Danielrober2
Monday, November 28, 2011 at 11:34 PMThe SNP and Swinney have a chance to get in the game and make a difference. But it will never do that by standing by and let others do the hard work and make difficult decisions, because they will get the credit when this recession ends, as they always do. Don’t become the party of Billy no Mates, that is not what Scotland needs.
іmmigrantwoman
Monday, November 28, 2011 at 11:32 PM336 tamdundee, Abject Nonsense.
Danielrober2
Monday, November 28, 2011 at 11:21 PM# 334 anti U K.....I think some of you guys are in the process of becoming bone idle. Blame Westminster, blame Danny Alexander, attack an old MP (because it’s his fault because he is Labour), blame foreign fishermen, blame the Banks and blame the Polish for no kid’s jobs. Utterly pathetic nationalistic excuses. You should be embarrassed, not angry. .................................The SNP has a chance to make a difference during a serious European economic crisis. All of Europe is in it and the only way we are going to get out of it is by working hard. Again the only way this is all going to end is with hard work not play the blame game. The SNP can contribute to the solution rather than pouring on the misery and scorn...........................After one election you want to treat the other parties as if they are none-existent – What the.
tamdundee
Monday, November 28, 2011 at 11:16 PMand yes I did mean £37billion in annual tax subsidies for private pensions, which you may like to know, only pay out £35 billion every year. http:www.taxresearch.org.ukBlog20101011state-subsidy-to-private-pensions
tamdundee
Monday, November 28, 2011 at 11:14 PMI wish some of the anti public sector mob would do some research on public sector pensions before spouting their bile. Were they to do so it may open their eyes to a few facts. Facts like the tax subsidy paid to private pensions, is actually greater than the amounts paid out. So the taxpayer is funding private sector pensions as well as public sector pensions, and that subsidy is more than they pay in public sector pensions. so logically, if the Government get their way on public sector pensions, they will next reduce private pension tax subsidies which cost them more. the reason private pensions are now so poor is because of the naked greed of the pension firms and the amounts they take in charges. Compare the charges here, with other countries and you will see for yourself. Public sector workers have earned there pensions and if you dont support them, who will help you when they go after your £37 billion annual tax subsidies next?
Bunch of malcontent whingers
Monday, November 28, 2011 at 10:55 PM#324 What a lame argument. So your great plan is to punish one group because another group made a different choice? I.e one lot chose to work in the public sector and the other went for the private?
Brit-free
Monday, November 28, 2011 at 10:46 PMDanny Bhoy claims that blaming Westmonster et al is becoming unacceptable ...to whom Daniel ? .....for the MAJORITY S N P Government and its supporters this makes perfect sense ....i and the rest of my fellow nationalists are anticipating the referendum campaign ...painting unionism in a bad light is fair game , the unionists are flinging dung every which way ...and will continue up until the referendum takes place ...and they have the compliant brit-state licensed media which dare not step out of line if they wish to see their licenses renewed , spitting out anti S N P propaganda day in day out ...we will take no lessons from unionism concerning what is or isnt " acceptable "
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