Let me put my cards on the table here. I am a recently-retired public-sector worker which, if you believe some of the rubbish being circulated by the Daily Mail and the government makes me some sort of criminal insofar as I have a pension that although small, allows me to live with something approaching dignity.

The fact that I contributed to this pension all my working life butters no parsnips with some as they point out that the money I paid my contributions with in the first place came originally from the public purse.

My pension lump sum allowed me to settle the mortgage on my modest two up, two down, Band A, terraced house. The sum I am left to live on every month equates to less than the National Minimum Wage. For this I spent over thirty years on the front line as a Staff Nurse in the NHS. During this time I dealt with kids with cancer, the elderly, violent drunks, drug addicts, HIV patients, mental illness, severe trauma, burns and all the other stuff you get to see on ‘Casualty’.

There is no bodily fluid that I have not mopped up again and again and again in copious quantities and I have dealt with the most emotionally-draining cases that still cause my eyes to water thirty-odd years later as I recall them.

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want a better pension than my colleagues in the private sector although I will admit that some of the deals that our bankers seem to get makes me drool with envy.

No, I believe that ALL people who work should be able to retire on a pension that allows them to live with dignity in old age. Instead of demonising public sector workers for wanting to retain their pension schemes, there should be legislation passed to force private employers to provide similar schemes. Then perhaps their own employees too can face retirement without fear and knowing that they won’t have to work until they drop in order to provide themselves with an acceptable standard of living.

Having retired, I cannot strike but I will be standing shoulder to shoulder on the picket line with my former colleagues on November 30^th. I know that patients will still be cared for because that is what we joined for. We didn’t join the service to stand outside our hospitals, town halls and schools on a freezing November morning to cry out for public sympathy. We are doing it because we believe that the current government proposals on pensions are unfair and will mean that many of our colleagues will have to work longer, pay more in and get less out of it at the end.

It hurts me to see any working man or woman demonised. In the public sector, amongst many other things, we deliver your babies, teach your children, lock up your criminals, empty your bins, wade through your raw sewage, put out your fires, keep your streets safe, look after you when you are ill or dying and bury or cremate you at the end.

We know that people who enter these services do not accrue great wealth and most of us remain fairly anonymous all our working lives. To be honest, that’s the way we prefer it. It takes a lot for us to get angry and stand or march chanting under banners. We know that times are very difficult so we are not asking for big pay-rises, company cars or fringe benefits.

All we want, when we choose to retire or can no longer work is a contributory pension scheme that allows us to live with dignity and respect.

It’s really not a lot to ask is it?

A retired Unite Member