Workers at Gatwick airport are to be balloted for strikes in a row over pensions.

Unite said 1,800 security staff, firefighters, airfield and surface transport workers will begin voting next week, with the result due on November 16.

The union said the move was in protest at plans to close the final salary pension scheme.

Unite officer Phil Silkstone said: "Our members are rightly furious. Yet again we have ordinary hard-working people losing out on security in retirement at the expense of greedy, fat cat bosses and massive shareholder pay-outs.

"Closing the scheme is nothing more than blatant opportunism.

"The pension deficit is easily affordable and could have been wiped out with the £178 million in shareholder pay-outs it has made over the last few years."