County Hall is the HQ of Tory-run Nottinghamshire County Council, led by the appropriately named Kay Cutts. As public sector unions took action in defence of their pensions on November 30th, it was just one of the hundreds of picketed building across the country.

Organising at County Hall has been difficult for years for many reasons. However, some of the blame must be laid at the door of Unison, widely viewed as having miss-handled the implementation of single status at the council which saw a number of staff taking sizeable pay cuts.

Picketing began at 7am, when it was still dark, with strikers trying to stop people at the car entrance. This met with limited success, with some scabs even driving down the wrong side of the road to avoid being challenged. The more obvious incidents of stupid driving decreased as the number of pickets swelled.

A second picket line was established at the main entrance to the building. The three pickets there were also joined by Labour councillor Jim Creamer (a member of RMT).

Unfortunately, pickets had little success at turning people around, although one person did at least take an application form. Not that union membership necessarily translates into solidarity as a number of members were amongst those crossing the picket line.

Bizarrely a number of people claimed to be fully supportive even as they went into work. The concept of collective action apparently being lost on them.

One of the more amusing episodes occurred when striker tried to discourage Mrs Cutts from crossing the picket line. Inevitably, she went in, but she did take a leaflet and expressed concern about the impact of the cold weather on pickets' welfare.

Given County Hall's high profile, picketers were visited by BBC Nottingham who did a live interview with one of the strikers.

Pickets were wound up at 10am to give strikers time to make their way to the Forest Recreation Ground for the march and rally.

The national action was called by a huge array of public sector unions, but it was notable that only Unison mobilised for pickets at County Hall, despite GMB having a number of members, particularly in the ICT department.

This was particularly unfortunate given many council staff's bad experiences with Unison locally and it is to be hoped that in the (likely) event of any future action, GMB activists pull their finger out.

Despite these issues, the strike wasn't ineffective at all. The car park, normally full to overflowing had a number of free spaces and it was clear that there were less people coming in than usual.

Management had also had to bring in a number of private security guards (perhaps as many as four) to cover for the facilities staff who were nearly all on strike.