Trade unionists will to take part in a day of action on November 30. Gerard Coyne, West Midlands regional secretary of union Unite, explains why.

When the people of Birmingham get the facts about public sector pensions, we think they’ll be on the side of public sector workers.

Trade unions are seven times more trusted than politicians when it comes to the facts about the affordability of public sector pensions according to a recent poll by Survation.

This result was no surprise to Unite, after the Government attempted to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes on pensions. It claimed its latest proposals would protect people, who are ten years or less away from retirement, and said some would even be better off.

Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said a nurse retiring when earning £34,200 would receive a pension of £22,800 a year under the proposed new scheme compared to only £17,300 under current arrangements. He forgot to mention that a typical public sector worker can expect to survive on a pension of just £5,600 a year.

But when Unite’s pension experts analysed his figures they found he was comparing a nurse working for 43 years and retiring at 68 in the proposed scheme with a nurse working for 35 years and retiring at 60 in the current scheme.