Gov’t has ‘moral duty’

The Berkshire towns of Aldermaston and Burghfield are not normally associated with strikes – but that is exactly what is going to happen again next week in an increasingly bitter dispute over pensions at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE).

Six hundred Unite members employed as managers, craft workers and manual workers at the AWE will take two days of strike action next week starting on Wednesday January 18 and a further 48 hours of walkouts have been organised from Monday January 30.

Two 24-hour strikes have already been held in November and December last year.

The workforce are not in any sense militant but they feel deeply and absolutely betrayed by their employers who are planning to close the workforce’s defined benefit pension scheme on the January 31.

Rather than having a guaranteed income in retirement the workers will have to rely on the vagaries and fluctuations of the stock market for their income in old age. The members are set to lose thousands in retirement income

Government’s failed promise

What makes the dispute so bitter is that the pension proposals are totally at odds with the “copper bottom” promise made by the then Conservative government in the 1990s when the AWE was privatised, that their pensions would be protected. Clearly that promise is not being honoured.

That level of anger is demonstrated as workers have overwhelmingly voted by 92 per cent in favour of strike action.

Unite are demanding a meeting with energy minister Jesse Norman and believes that the government has a moral duty for the pension scheme to be re-transferred to the MoD pension scheme.

“The four days of strike action later this month are not being taken lightly. It is not a ‘political’ strike, but one taken reluctantly by our members who have no desire to see thousands of pounds wiped off their retirement incomes,” commented Unite regional officer Bob Middleton.