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National strike over pensions hits UK schools and public services

Thousands of schools were closed and public services at airports, ports, courts and job centres disrupted Thursday as up to three-quarters of a million workers staged the biggest national strike in Britain in a generation over pension changes.

Picket line were also being staged outside Prime Minister David Cameron’s office with some officials joining thousands of civil servants taking industrial action and at a series of protest marches, including passing government departments, that were also directed at public service cuts.
‘The brutal truth is simply this: The burden of deficit reduction is being piled unfairly onto millions of low and medium-paid public sector workers who did nothing to cause the crash.” Trades Union Congress (TUC) general secretary Brendan Barber said at a rally in Exeter, south-west England.
Barber said that those facing pension changes have already had their pay frozen for two years, even though inflation is higher than it has been for over a decade.
“Meanwhile those who are actually guilty of causing the crash in the finance sector are busy getting back to business and bonuses as usual, escaping the scene of their crimes just as a hit-and-run driver would flee a car crash. This is a gold standard for unfairness,’ he said.
The strike action was organised by the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) and the University and College Union (UCU) in coordination with members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), who are facing similar pension changes.
It was estimated that around a third of schools were expected to be closed, with another third partially-closed – resulting in the teachers’ strike affecting about 14,000 schools in total. The remaining third were expected to be unaffected.
Walk-outs by the PCS, which has around 250,000 members, also included coastguards, police support workers, immigration staff and driving test examiners, were held across the UK. The government believed one in five of the nation’s 500,000 civil servants will be on strike.
Speaking on BBC One’s Breakfast, Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude criticised the coordinated action, which unions have said will grow unless the government reverse its austerity measures.
‘People are going to be scratching their heads, wondering why teachers and some civil servants are going on strike while discussions are still going about how we keep public sector pensions among the best available,” Maude said.
He argued that the reason for pension changes were that people are living longer and said it was “perfectly reasonable for people to expect to work a bit longer “ and to ask them to “pay a bit more” because other taxpayers who are paying the rest, have seen their own pensions take a hit.
The action was also opposed by opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband and the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, David Frost, who said the government reforms to pensions were ‘essential’ and could have a knock-on effect for businesses.

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