29 November 2011
St Helens Green Party today re-affirmed its support for tomorrow’s (Wednesday 30th November) industrial action in defence of pensions and public services.
An estimated 3,000 local public sector workers will join a three million-strong national strike which the trade union movement is labelling ‘the biggest in living memory’.
Members of St Helens Green Party will join protesters tomorrow in highlighting what the party insists is “an attack on pensions and the erosion of public services”.
St Helens Green Party spokesman, Francis Williams, says:
“Fair pensions are worth fighting for – and that applies to the private sector too.
“In this race to the bottom we are all losers and staff will be losing a day’s pay in order to make a stand for what is right against what is clearly very wrong.
“Any disruption is regrettable so I’m pleased that the unions have agreed to maintain ‘life and limb’ services throughout the day, but ordinary working people across St Helens have had enough. They are being asked to pay more towards their retirement, work for longer to reach it and get less when they do – all this barely three years since the local government pension scheme was revised to take into account the fact that people are living longer.
"The government has confirmed that the increase in contributions is not going towards pensions, but instead to paying down the deficit. This is little more than a stealth tax on public sector workers, many of them on low incomes.
"With the median pensions for a woman employed by the NHS standing at just £3,500 a year and just £2,600 for a female local government employee, the government is relying on misinformation on ‘golden plated pensions' to push through unnecessary cuts to some of the country's most important workers.”
The Green Party believes that by cutting tax evasion and avoidance, and introducing a so-called Robin Hood tax on financial transactions, these “ideologically-driven” cuts would be unnecessary.
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