I am not giving up ANY of my retirement benefits trhat I have been working and paying for for the last 20 years.
No you're right-you're not. And neither would you be under this proposal as you would well know if you had been to a briefing and asked the question.
then in year 11 if the union ever develops a backbone we make a stand to restore our pay to where it should be and we get a pay rise well in excess of RPI+0.5%?
What makes you think that we would have lost ground if we only ever get RPI + 0.5? I'm not sure what you think can be done to generate cash for rises much above that in the long term anyway.
And as for backbone-you are the union. Get involved. And just remember there was hardly a significant number of people who were prepared to show their backbone over PPP. In fact it was most of the people who are actually still involved who spent endless time lobbying politicians and the like. Without their work we would probably be SERCO by now.