FOR Newport workers taking to the picket line, their strike day began in the early morning as union reps stood their ground outside offices from as early as 7am.

Outside the government buildings in Duffryn the Office for National Statistics and the Intellectual Property Office held a joint picket with 20 people.

Gez Kirby, PCS union rep at the ONS, said the support at the office was solid.

PCS said about 80 per cent of the union branch’s 750 members not working.

In response to minister Francis Maude’s call for workers to not walk out, he said: “It’s OK for a millionaire to be telling people like us on our kind of pay that we should be at work.”

Lecturers at Coleg Gwent’s Nash Campus were out on strike yesterday as members of the University and Colleges Union walked out.

Roy McCabe said the strike had “100 per cent” support from the union’s 110 members in Nash and that management, including the campus director, were on strike.

Not far from the college, Phil Deacon, business studies tutor and union rep with the National Union of Teachers in Lliswerry High School, was manning a picket by the school gates.

Seven members of his union were on strike there.

Asked how he felt about being told by the government that he had a moral duty to work, he said: “We have a moral duty to be out.

“If we are talking about increasing people’s working life to 67 or 68 you are talking about taking the best years of retirement from them.”

In the city centre passport office PCS rep Anne-Louise McKeon-Williams said strike action there was motivated by government plans to cut jobs at the office.

He said: “I would say the majority of staff voted for strike action.

“It’s not just about our pensions.

It’s about the jobs here – we’re still losing 150.

“I think that’s why people have stayed away.”

Although passport office customers were still attending appointments the rep claimed no postal applications were being processed and no telephone calls were being answered.

Teacher Abi Beacon, deputy head teacher at the Gaer Junior School and Association of Teacher and Lecturers member, spoke at the Newport Trades Council rally in John Frost Square that attracted 200 people.

In her speech she said: “Most teachers simply cannot work until they are 66, never mind 68.

“The demands of the job are simply too great for that.”