“Exactly what planet are you on?” UNISON president Eleanor Smith asked David Cameron and Nick Clegg as she opened UNISON’s women’s conference in Brighton today.
She spoke out against the Tory and Lib Deb leaders and the threats they have brought to maternity rights, equal pay and vital public services.
Women were particularly at risk from the cuts she said, women make up the majority of public service workers and they face four times greater risk of poverty in retirement than men – a state of affairs hardly helped by the government’s attack on public service pensions.
She called on UNISON women, who make up one in seven of union members in the UK, to stand up “for pensions, for public services, for our communities,” and she continued “we must stand up… because we can win.”