PCS

On Thursday 13th of May, PCS members at the National Gallery and the National Gallery shop went on a 2-hour walkout against low pay. This was not the first time that National Gallery staff had taken action against the employer, who is paying 60p an hour less than the London Living Wage - but it was the first time that staff at the National Gallery shop had taken action. The gallery was brought to a virtual standstill when around 70 staff walked out. It was a show of strength, to demonstrate to management that they would not accept poverty wages - and they have the power to force gallery bosses...

Under a Lib Dem-Tory coalition, we know that members of the Public and Commercial Services Union will be attacked even more viciously than we were under New Labour; indeed the whole of the public sector will be. It is against this background that the PCS will hold its national conference between 17 and 19 May. In our view the union must put itself on a war footing to meet the threats ahead. This means constant agitation amongst members, explaining what will happen and the need for industrial action; it means vigorous recruiting of non-members; it means working out how best to hurt the employer...

Jessica Barnard works as an air traffic controller for NATS. Tell us a bit about the work you do. I work as an air traffic controller for NATS. That used to stand for National Air Traffic Services. But since our £1.5 million corporate re-branding, we are “NATS, the UK’s leading provider of air traffic management services”. NATS is split into two businesses. NATS En Route Ltd (NERL) handles mostly flights at a higher level and looks after most of the infrastructure, such as communications, navigational aids and surveillance equipment. NATS Services Ltd (NSL) competes for contracts to run...

On Budget Day, 24 March, the civil service union PCS took a third day of strike action over detrimental changes to redundancy and early retirement rights. Overall this strike seems to have been more solidly supported than a two-day strike on the 8 and 9 May. Despite the Government’s call to the RMT and Unite unions that they must get around the negotiating table to solve their disputes (with Network Rail and British Airways) they are not following their own advice over our dispute, and have refused further talks. Therefore the PCS has no choice but to continue its campaign. Over the General...

In the 24 March budget Chancellor Alistair Darling announced the first tranches of cuts to the public sector. But he did this by saying he wanted to save hundreds of millions of pounds through “improving efficiency”. What does this mean? As with so many New Labour announcements, this efficiency drive recycled elements from previous initiatives. For example, in December 2009 the Government launched “First Line First”. This had the same recipe as the budget — improvements in procurement, reducing sick leave, moving civil servants out of London, cutting back on consultant spend etc. Before “First...

On 10 March, Merseyside activists organised a protest outside the UK Border Agency in Liverpool to show solidarity with the women who were then on hunger strike at Yarls Wood detention centre near Bedford and to demand the closing of the detention centres, an end to deportations and the scrapping of immigration controls. The picket was supported by Merseyside Coalition Against Racism and Fascism, No One is Illegal, and Liverpool Students Against Rascism and Fascism. The News from Nowhere bookshop, Unite union branch 6/522 and activists involved in Wirral Against the Cuts supported the event...

On 8-9 March the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) took strike action on 8-9 March over the Government’s proposals to reduce redundancy and early retirement payouts civil servants (proposals which come into force on the 1 April). The national union reports well over 100,000 members took action on each day. As with all disputes, the numbers of members on strike varied greatly between union branches, with some reporting their best ever turnout, others a poor turnout. This variation in turn out has prompted the right wing in the PCS to ridicule the dispute; they openly question the union...

The civil service workers' union PCS will strike again, over severance terms, on 24 March. Further strike action was announced at the rally in London on the second day of PCS's two-day strike on the issue on 8-9 March. The initial announcement was a strike on 19 March, but we understand that the actual date is more likely to be Budget Day, 24 March. The issue is Government plans to cut workers' entitlements to severance pay in case of redundancy. If the entitlements are cut, it will be cheaper and easier for the next Government, Tory or New Labour, to slash thousands of jobs from the civil...

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Members of the civil service union PCS have voted decisively to take industrial action over redundancy and early retirement terms. National strikes will take place on Monday 8 and Tuesday 9 March. The union has focused mainly on the adverse changes proposed to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS). But we mustn’t forget that tens of thousands of staff, members of the inferior Nuvos pension scheme, are only entitled to statutory minimum redundancy payments. This dispute is also about eliminating the two tiers of redundancy terms, and levelling up. To undermine the strike, senior managers...