The message from the Labour Euro MP will be read out at rallies and protests in the town centre in Basildon.
Under proposals from the coalition government, public workers may be forced to pay more in pension contributions, work longer until retirement and still receive less, as the Government seeks to slash the cost of public sector pensions by £2.8 billion in the next three years.
Labour’s Richard Howitt MEP said:
“As a former public sector worker myself, I stand alongside the trade unions in Essex resisting the unfair and unwarranted cut to their pensions.
“The Government is fiddling the figures over how inflation is calculated; it is fiddling the figures by saying low-paid part-time workers have to contribute as much as higher paid full-time workers; and it is fiddling the figures by ignoring the impact of the pay freeze on public sector workers’ wages.
“And what’s more, the Government is threatening to withdraw its current offer, threatening to remove even more employment rights if public sector workers don’t submit to their will.
“This is dishonest, it is bullying and it is quite simply wrong.”
If i contributed the same amount of money toward a pension that the public sector workers contribute toward theirs, my final pension would be approx a third of what theirs would be. Their strike says to me that they want me to pay even more taxes, take even more pay cuts, suffer even more drops in my standard of living to fund their pensions so that they don’t have to make any sacrifices at all to pay for their own. My heart bleeds for them. I am really quite angry with them right now.
These people are being used by the unions and the Labour party to attack the government. As said above, these people want to have all the benefits of a final salary pension, they just don’t want to pay for it themselves. They’d much rather the rest of us do that for them.
It’s a shame that this MEP hasn’t got the cojones to speak out against the EU budgeting which he should be more interested in!! Get your own house in order before sticking your nose in domestic affairs!!