THE Northern Echo speaks to workers from different areas of the public sector to get their views on today's strike action.

SOCIAL WORKER

The Northern Echo: Dave Glew

DAVE GLEW is a social worker in the Youth Offending Service of Durham County Council, based at County Hall.

Mr Glew, 47, of Darlington, has worked for the authority since he was 18, and is facing the prospect of working in a stressful job for 11 more years than he had planned when he started work.

“I’m absolutely devastated that these proposals are on the table,’’ said Mr Glrew, who is currently assistant Unison branch secretary.

“It is the third attack on my pension and who is to say that in the next four, five, six, seven, ten years they won’t change the goalposts again.

“I suspect the way the Government are trying to sell things – ie people are living longer and therefore the cost to the National Health Service is greater, so let’s make them work longer.

“I don’t believe for one second that I will be in any fit state to carry on working when I am 68 years old.”

PASSPORT EXAMINER

The Northern Echo: Jeff McGough

JEFF MCGOUGH, 33, of Spennymoor, County Durham, works as a passport examiner at the Passport Office in Durham City.

He said: “We have three core concerns – we are being asked to work longer, we are being asked to pay more in monthly contributions and we are going to get back less in retirement.

“When I joined the Civil Service I would have been able to draw my pension at 60, but I’m now going to have to work until I’m 68.

The CPS branch secretary continued: “I’m going to be paying almost double in monthly contributions and I’m going to be getting back less in retirement.

“We don’t feel that that’s fair and we feel that the Hutton Report and other evidence does suggest, contrary to the Government’s statements, that our pensions are sustainable and affordable.

“Historically, civil servants aren’t fantastically well paid.

“A trade-off has been that we have had a decent, but not a gold-plated, pension, which affords civil servants, who have worked hard all their lives, a decent and respectable standard of living in retirement – and we think that’s fair.”

NURSE

The Northern Echo: Pat Dixon

PAT DIXON, a 59-year-old staff nurse from Thirsk, North Yorkshire works in the A and E department of The James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough.

She said: “In 2008, when they changed the pensions agreement, they said they would leave things alone for the next 25 years and they have reneged on that promise. We feel we should not be expected to pay more or at least not the amount they are asking.

“Nursing is a hard job where you spend 12 and 13 hours a day on your feet, how they expect us to keep going until we are 68, I have no idea?

SCHOOL CROSSING WARDEN

The Northern Echo: Pat Winn

HELEN WINN, a lollipop lady from Darlington, said she would not be striking if children were at school.

Mrs Winn, 53, covers the junction of Parkside and Coleridge Gardens, in south Darlington, and looks after Skerne Park Primary School pupils.

She said: “If the kids were back at school I would be there for them for their safety. I would hate to think that one of them would get knocked over.”

But she added: “I think at the end of the day they (the Government) are going to do what they want to do, but we are going to show them that it’s the little people that make the world go round and kick up a fuss.

“They expect us to work longer and get less.”