UNITE have urged the Tories to honour promises made on pensions a quarter of a century ago as Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) workers begin their second day of strike action.

Six hundred Unite members employed at AWE began a 48-hour stoppage at midnight yesterday over plans to replace their pension scheme. Workers were promised in the early 1990s by Margaret Thatcher’s government that their pensions would be safe once AWE transferred from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to the private sector.

Now AWE plc, which is a consortium of two US-owned companies and Serco, wants to make changes to pensions which Unite says will cost members thousands of pounds when they retire.

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, who is visiting the picket lines today, will tell the strikers that the pledges made by the then Tory government have now been broken.

He pointed out that AWE bosses want to slash the retirement incomes by replacing the current pensions scheme with a defined contribution one where the final retirement income is not guaranteed.

Mr McCluskey said the proposed changes were a “disgrace” and that workers felt “deeply betrayed.”

He added that the most just course of action would be to return workers to the MoD pension scheme.

An AWE spokesman said: “AWE is committed to establishing future pension arrangements that are affordable for our staff and attractive to future employees.

“Over recent weeks, improvements have been made to the new scheme and additional enhanced benefits have been included.”

The first of the 48 hour stoppages ends at midnight tonight and the second 48-hour strike will be on January 30 and 31.

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