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.