The decision to ballot 34,000 of Prospect's working members over strike action because of the government's damaging changes to public service pensions was not taken lightly. Our record shows that our preferred way forward is by discussion and negotiation, to go that extra mile to get to a position where members can decide on the acceptability or otherwise of proposed changes.

This is what we did with a Labour government on the revisions to the civil service pension scheme in 2007, and again with the coalition government last year on redundancy terms.

The difference now is not a change of attitude on our part. It is the utter refusal by ministers to engage properly and the absolute disregard they have shown for the arguments put forward by Prospect and others about the impact of imposed detrimental change.

For example, we are in a ‘consultation' process about increases in employee pension contributions averaging 1.2 per cent on 1 April 2012 with further rises of 1 per cent coming in 2013 and again in 2014. But ministers and officials have made it crystal clear that the only point at issue is how the increases are shared around. What makes it worse is that they do not even pretend that this has anything to do with the sustainability of the schemes; it is a crude levy, an unfair and discriminatory extra tax on public servants to pay for budget deficits created by others.

The position is made worse by the fact that we also have a public sector pay freeze and soaring food and fuel bills. But ministers will not even discuss when the pay freeze will end or give any guarantees about the resumption of pay negotiations. They will not discuss the imposed switch from RPI to CPI which will hit existing pensioners as well as reducing the value of future pensions by around 25 per cent. The only possibility of progress there is through our application for judicial review.

On ‘reform' of schemes, we are told that these will have to be within Treasury-imposed cost envelopes - a process that looks to have only one objective at its heart, reducing employer costs.

So that is why we have to ballot. We are not alone and virtually all TUC-affiliated public sector unions and some organisations not even in the TUC have come to the same conclusion. Something certainly needs to be done to jolt the coalition out of its belief that it can treat public sector workers with disregard, and a massive demonstration in the form of a day of action on November 30, uniting people across the public sector, might just do it.

The alternative is for us to accept the unacceptable, to sit back and take it. In which case I have no doubt they will be back for more.

I want to reassure members, however, that the objective is still to make progress, not to strike. Nobody will be more pleased than me if, faced with this united stand by public sector workers, the government now decides to engage sensibly and show flexibility. It needs something to move them, so I am asking everyone balloted to vote yes. Not because any of us wants a strike, but because we want and demand pensions justice.

Paul Noon, Prospect general secretary