LONDON, March 28: More than one million local government employees in Britain went on strike on Tuesday in a pensions dispute that closed schools and caused travel chaos in what unions called the biggest walkout in 80 years. Waving banners and chanting their grievances, council workers set up picket lines outside council offices, police stations, universities, schools, libraries and museums across the country as part of the one-day stoppage.
Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, the biggest union involved, said: “Our members have taken the decision to strike very seriously indeed.
“They are not selfish people, they are not using any excuse to call ‘strike’ and have a day off — they are asking simply for what they have paid for and what they deserve.”
The unions are protesting at plans by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government to scrap a rule allowing council staff to retire at 60 if their age and length of service add up to 85 years.
Prentis said the government had reached a deal last year with millions of civil servants, teachers and health workers allowing them to retire at 60.
“All we are asking for is the same kind of protection for council workers,” he said.
The government, however, appeared determined to press ahead with its plans to remove the so-called “85 rule” from October.
Local Government Minister Phil Woolas said it was illegal under European age discrimination legislation and had to go, but he hoped an alternative solution could be found.
“The question is: is it possible to replace the benefits that members of the scheme receive from ‘rule 85’ in a different way?” he told BBC Radio.
In a day of action, Unison said more than a million people refused to go to work in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, making it the biggest walkout of its kind since Britain’s landmark General Strike in 1926.
The Local Government Association (LGA), however, said the stoppage had been smaller than expected, dismissing union predictions of 1.5 million strikers as “wildly optimistic”.—AFP
