Three groups of workers set to strike on 31 January

Submitted by martin on 11 January, 2008 - 11:54 Author: Gerry Bates
PCS on strike

Civil service workers in the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) will strike on 31 January over pay. They are likely to be joined by workers in HMRC (Revenue and Customs), striking over job losses, and workers in the Home Office (striking over pay).

Next in line are workers in the Department for Transport, who will be balloting from 25 January to 15 February. The union in DfT plans a one-day strike on 29 February, followed by a six-month plan of selective action designed for maximum impact.

The DWP action is over a three-year pay settlement imposed by the employer in November 2007. DWP workers have already struck on 6/7 December.

The Home Office action is also over an imposed three-year pay settlement, imposed in August 2007. Home Office PCS members have voted first 76% to reject the deal, and then 57% for strike action.

The union leadership in DfT - unlike, sadly, the national PCS leadership - has designed its campaign around the theme of uniting workers in order to "level up" to common pay and conditions. Civil service pay bargaining is done through 241 different units, so that workers doing similar work in different bits of the civil service may have very different pay and conditions.

The PCS DfT leadership explains: "Each DfT Agency and DfT Centre negotiates pay separately and as a result there are wide variations, at each grade, in pay rates across the Department. If this isn't bad enough, last year we ended up having subinflation pay offers imposed upon on us in Highways Agency, VOSA, DfT(C), DSA, and MCA.

Given Government announcements we knew that things would be as tough as or even worse this year. Unfortunately our prediction has proven true.

In light of the above the DfT Group Committee (the body with over responsibility for the Union in the department) decided we should try to have pay rates determined at the Departmental level.

Earlier this year we put that proposition to members. The result was an overwhelming "Yes".

Shortly after that vote we submitted a DfT-wide pay claim to senior managers.

We did face a tactical dilemma in light of the vote: should we demand DfT-wide talks straight off or should we enter into pay talks at the Agency/DfT(C) level; see what happens and then move to a departmental campaign. The Union chose the latter.

So at present we are slogging our way through the local talks. Where these do not deliver DfT rates of pay and pay increases worth at least inflation we are asking members to reject them in pay ballots (we believe no local negotiations will deliver such terms). The hope/plan being that after members locally have rejected their year's pay offers we can then all work together at the DfT level".

Unfortunately, the supposedly-left PCS leadership's response to the Government's announcement that it will impose three-year 2% pay settlements across the public sector has been very weak:

"However", said PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka, "if the government are talking about addressing low pay, keeping pace with inflation, as well as finally recognising that civil and public servants are the victims of inflation, not the causes, then these proposals could be something we could look at."

And if bosses were just philanthropists with no other thought in their minds than the common good, then we would not need trade unions at all... If the sun shone every day, we would not need umbrellas...

Paradoxically, the GMB general union, which does not have the PCS's reputation for leftism, responded far more aptly to the Government's announcement.

Brian Strutton, GMB National Secretary for Public Service said: “The argument that public sector pay has to be controlled to manage down inflation is economically flawed and socially unacceptable... Any sensible negotiator will want to see a premium for sacrificing future negotiating rounds and that would mean any long-term deal having to go above RPI – and that isn’t the government’s intention...

“For example, among the 1.5 million local government sector workers they want a one-year pay deal that corrects some of the low-pay and unequal pay anomalies as well as catching up on nearly 2% worth of inflation lost in their last pay deal.”

“The reality is that Brown and Darling want to have public sector pay settled for political expediency because there will be a general election within the next three years. GMB isn’t interested in those sorts of games – we have members who need good pay rises.”

However, the GMB is a minority union in public-service sectors like local government, and to date has almost always been less militant than the far-from-militant Unison. Many trade unionists may suspect that the GMB is talking militant because it feels at no risk of being called on to put words into action.

More on the DfT campaign
More on the DWP campaign
More on the HMRC campaign

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