campaigns

SNP SUPPORTS LOCAL GOVERNMENT
PENSIONS CAMPAIGN

Glasgow MSP Sandra White sent the following message of support to trade union members taking part in the local government industrial action:

Friends and Comrades,

I am writing to express my support for the 28 March Strike Action which is in a just cause; to protect the hard won benefits of public sector workers.

The Local Government Pension Scheme is a model towards which we should all be striving and which any caring government would be seeking to extend across the public and private sectors so that all workers would be able to look forward to a dignified retirement. Instead Blair, Brown and Prescott are determined to tear away the pay and conditions advances made over generations and leave public sector workers open to the vagaries of the pensions market-place. This is a disgrace which will not be forgotten by those who work in our public services, many of whom have in the past given their electoral support to the Labour Party.

The pay of most public sector workers lags behind that of other workers and you have been taken for granted over the years. You deserve more and better pay and conditions - not worse. You have been maligned by those to whom you should be able to look for support and yet you have continued, often in awful work surroundings, to deliver a service which many in society would suffer painfully without. Public sector workers are heroes without praise and yet this government wants to steal the hard earned pension rights, to which you havve contributed, and reduce many of you to poverty in old age.

I oppose the attacks on your pension rights and as the SNP Deputy Spokesperson on Social Justice will speak out against Labour's betrayal of public sector workers.

I wish you well and I wish you victory in your just cause.

All the best,

Sandra White MSP.

Sandra was joined on the protest march by Glasgow SNP
Councillor John Mason.