Cameron urges public sector staff not to strike

Prime minister will call on unions to keep negotiating after Monday talks failed to reach settlement to avoid Thursday's walkouts

David Cameron will appeal directly to public sector workers not to go on strike this week, telling an audience of local government leaders that the current public sector pension arrangements are "not fair to the taxpayer".

The prime minister will intervene in the row between the government and unions over pension reforms after talks on Monday failed to negotiate a settlement to avoid mass walk-outs on Thursday.

Up to 750,000 teachers, lecturers and civil servants are preparing to strike over the reforms.

In a speech to the Local Government Association in Birmingham on Tuesday, Cameron is expected to say that the current system is "unsustainable" and reforms are inevitable.

The cabinet held a special session during its regular weekly meeting in Downing Street on Tuesday to discuss the likely impact of the strikes and contingency plans.

Sources said Cameron's speech would be "non-confrontational" and set out the case for making public sector pensions fairer for taxpayers.

His official spokesman said: "Our view is that reform of public sector pensions is necessary, that the proposals we have set out represent a fair deal for public sector workers and for the taxpayer, and that, as we are in the middle of discussions with the unions, strike action on Thursday is premature."

Monday's talks failed to reach any firm agreement, despite the government appearing to offer a significant compromise over local government pensions.

Two hours of negotiations left the unions and the government still fundamentally divided with major gaps in opinions unresolved, Brendan Barber, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said.

Unions said they had made no progress on the most contentious proposals ? to increase public sector workers' contributions, change the system of uprating schemes and raise the pension age for government employees.

But the biggest public sector union, Unison, indicated that the government had given enough ground on local government pensions for it to delay a strike ballot until later in the summer in the hope of further concessions.

The government described the talks as constructive and indicated that it was preparing to offer concessions on the local government scheme, which is funded and has 3.5 million mostly low-paid members.

There have been warnings that higher contributions could tip the scheme into surplus while forcing low-paid workers out.

Lord Hutton, the Labour former business secretary who drew up the blueprint for the coalition's pension reforms, warned last week that the proposed three percentage point increase in contributions might trigger a mass opt-out, jeopardising the viability of the scheme.

The minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, and the chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, said in a joint statement that the talks would now continue into July ? although one Whitehall source also suggested there was no pressing deadline to end the negotiations before the pension contributions are due to kick in next April.

"We recognise that the funding basis for the local government pension scheme is different," the statement said.

"There are important implications for how the contributions and benefits interact, as both Lord Hutton and the unions have set out. On that basis, we have agreed to have a more in-depth discussion with local government unions and the TUC about how we take these factors into account. "While the talks are ongoing, it is obviously disappointing that some unions have decided on industrial action.

"But what the recent ballot results show is that there is extremely limited support for the kind of strike action union leaders are calling for. Less than 10% of the civil service workforce has voted for strike actions, and only about a third of teachers."

Barber said: "In some areas, it's clear that there is the possibility of agreement, but in terms of some of the key issues there is clearly a major gap between our position and that of the government.

"The strikes will be taking place on Thursday. Four unions balloted their members and reached that decision, and that reflects the degree of anger and worry and real fear there is across everyone who works for public sectors that their pensions are under threat."

Dave Prentis, the head of Unison, which has 1.2 million members in the pension scheme, said his union would not now ballot until after further talks in the summer, indicating that it had gone into the talks fully expecting to do so. "There was a sense that today we were in real negotiations," he said.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the National Union of Teachers, the University and College Union and the PCS all confirmed they would strike on Thursday. Some unions have privately said they will stick with the talks, despite believing they are doomed, to avoid the public relations disaster of being perceived to be responsible for negotiations collapsing.

Unions and the government are eager to win over public opinion ahead of strikes. One ComRes poll suggested that although 55% of people believe the public will not support co-ordinated strikes, 78% agree it is unfair for low-paid public employees to "pay the price for mistakes made by bankers before the financial crisis".

Polly Curtis

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