Unison has increased the pressure on the government’s public sector pension changes by criticising pension tax breaks for high earners that cost £10bn a year.
Ahead of the November 30 strike over the plans, the public service union said it was a ‘national scandal’ that the top 1% of earners, those on more than £150,000 a year, receive tax relief on their pension contributions.It contrasted this with low-wage public sector workers ‘being told to work longer, pay more and get less in their small pensions’. Government plans for public sector pension reform include a proposal to increase employee contributions by an average of 3.2% of pay by 2015.
Unison said the breaks given to high earners were worth three times the amount the government was trying to raise by ‘taxing’ public sector workers’ pensions. The union, whose members voted earlier this month to join the November 30 action, added that high-earners’ average pensions were worth 34 times more than the average public sector worker’s pension.
Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: ‘This is a national scandal. Whilst top bosses and the mega rich benefit from £10bn pounds worth of tax breaks, low-paid public sector workers are left fighting for their small pensions.
‘They’ve already had two years’ of frozen pay at a time of high inflation, and hundreds of thousands are facing the prospect of losing their jobs. The chancellor’s claim that we are all in this together just does not ring true.’
Prentis added: ‘Most public sector workers won’t retire on a fortune. Average pensions in local government are just £4,000, dropping to just £2,800 for women. In the NHS, the median pension for women is £3,500 – hardly gold plated. That’s after going without between 5% and 8% of their salary year in, year out. Meanwhile average pension pots for FTSE 100 directors are a whopping £3.91m.
‘It’s time the government took a long, hard look at who is breaking our economy. It is the mega rich in the City who got us into this mess, but it’s the low paid and hardworking families who are paying for the crisis.’
