Final talks take place ahead of pension strikes

27 Jun 11
Talks taking place this afternoon on the future of public sector pensions are unlikely to avert strike action planned for later this week, one teaching union has told Public Finance.
By Richard Johnstone | 24 June 2011

Talks taking place this afternoon on the future of public sector pensions are unlikely to avert strike action planned for later this week, one teaching union has told Public Finance.

Today’s talks are the last round of negotiations between the Cabinet Office and the Trades Union Congress ahead of the action planned for June 30. But one of the unions planning to strike has saidthat it does not expect the dispute to be resolved.

A spokesman for the National Union of Teachers said there were four points that the government needed to agree with to avert the action. These include withdrawing the proposal to index pensions to the lower Consumer Prices Index measure of inflation and scrapping plans to increase the pension age to the state pension level.

The NUT spokesman said that there had been talks for months, adding that ‘the government haven’t shown any willingness to move forward’, making a resolution unlikely.

A spokeswoman for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, who also plan to take action on Thursday, said it was clear that the government was not prepared to negotiate when it presented its proposed changes to pensions, acting as if these points were ‘already fixed’.

She added: ‘We don’t want to strike, we have never had one before, but the members are furious.’

The Cabinet Office and Treasury are leading negotiations for the government side. A Cabinet Office spokesman said this afternoon’s meeting had been long planned and was part of negotiation schedule between the TUC and government. Cabinet Office Francis Maude told PF last week that if these talks were not successful, discussions would soon have to begin between unions and individual employers ‘whatever happens'.

Education Secretary Michael Gove haswritten to head teachers, saying that they have a ‘moral duty’ to keep schools open during the strike action. In comments at the weekend, he also said parents ‘going in to help’ in strike-hit schools could keep them open.

The Public and Commercial Services union and the University and College Union are also preparing to strike on Thursday over the pension changes.

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