{"id":12194,"date":"2017-04-25T16:47:53","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T15:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=12194"},"modified":"2017-04-25T16:47:53","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T15:47:53","slug":"acknowledge-our-proposals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=12194","title":{"rendered":"Acknowledge our proposals"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Pension proposals by workers at AWE plc &#8211; the Atomic Weapons Establishment &#8211; to break the logjam in their long-running pensions\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 dispute have been ignored, Unite said today (April 25).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The snub dished out to the workers has led to the announcement of two more 24 hour strikes on May 10 and 18 at AWE\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield, starting at just past midnight.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>These strikes by more than 700 workers, who are pivotal to delivering the Trident nuclear programme, are on top of the already announced strikes on May 4 and 8, bringing the number of strike days since last November to 18.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The May 10 strike will coincide with the regulatory \u00e2\u20ac\u0098site exercise\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 day when the AWE runs through, with the local councils, the scenario of a nuclear incident on site.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The dispute centres on copper-bottomed pledges made in the early 1990s by the then-Tory government to AWE workers regarding the future of their pensions, once they transferred to the private sector.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>These promises have now been broken as AWE bosses closed the defined benefit pension scheme on Jnauary 31 this year, leaving employees facing thousands of pounds being slashed from their retirement incomes.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>To assist in finding a solution, Unite came up with alternative proposals, prepared by pension experts, for a new defined benefit scheme \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but these have, apparently, fallen on deaf ears.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe have not received a response or even an acknowledgement\u00c2\u00a0to the pension proposals that we sent to the AWE management on April 13,&#8221; said Unite regional officer Bob Middleton.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe put forward these proposals in good faith, but our members feel that they have now been snubbed.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe have decided to strike on May 10 as AWE is planning to stage the regulatory \u00e2\u20ac\u0098site exercise\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 on this day,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bAWE has to hold an exercise, working in conjunction with the local authorities, practising how it would handle a nuclear accident at AWE Aldermaston and Burghfield. This exercise takes months of planning.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt is for the AWE to say what contingencies it has in place to take account of the fact that our members, who would have been central to the successful completion of this exercise, will be on strike on May 10.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pension proposals by workers at AWE plc &#8211; the Atomic Weapons Establishment &#8211; to break the logjam in their long-running pensions\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 dispute have been ignored, Unite said today (April 25). &nbsp; The snub dished out to the workers has led to the announcement of two more 24 hour strikes on May 10 and 18 at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10478,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[627,664,270],"wps_subtitle":"AWE pensions snub prompts more strike action","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12194"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12195,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12194\/revisions\/12195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}