Between 1 and 22 October PCS will ballot all its members for a one-day strike on 5 November.
The Government has already announced plans to cut over 100,000 jobs in the civil service. Now the civil service union PCS believes that by early October the Government will formally put proposals to the unions to increase the pension retirement age from 60 to 65.
They may announce the scrapping of the final pension scheme (where your pension is calculated using the best salary rate in your last three years of service).
And PCS knows that senior managers are reviewing the redundancy payment scheme. They believe that it is too generous and has to be “reformed”, i.e. cut!
In the last Budget the Chancellor said: “I turn to further reforms in work practices. 80 per cent of sickness absences in the civil service are self certified, not subject to formal medical certification — and because the current arrangements for sickness leave across the civil service and public services are open to abuse, I am also today publishing plans we propose to implement to curtail uncertified absences.”
PCS understands that the Chancellor and senior ministers are looking at the new sick arrangements being piloted in Tesco as a model. Under them, workers are not paid for the first three days off sick.
PCS has responded with a series of demands: that the retirement age not be raised; that the final salary scheme remain in place along with the present redundancy scheme and that staff be allowed to retire at 60 with their pensions intact. There should be no compulsory redundancies. The present sick rules should stay in place.
The Government refuses to concede, so between 1 and 22 October PCS will ballot all its members for a one-day strike on 5 November.
It will be the biggest strike for many years in the civil service. But by itself it will not win the union’s demands. Discussion and organisation must start now on a strategy to win.
* After some debate, PCS has mentioned pay in the “Ten Reasons” it will put to members for striking. Pay should be put centre-stage, alongside pensions and jobs, with a precise demand: that the Treasury set its “remit” high enough to allow pay and conditions to be levelled up across the civil service, eliminating the poverty rates now current in some of the 192 different bargaining units.
* We should campaign for concerted action across the public sector, especially on pensions. Teachers, health service workers, and local government workers will face threats similar to the civil service. Branch-to-branch contacts should be made across the different unions to put pressure on the leaderships.
* The defeatist line that the PCS cannot win unless there is a general strike across the whole public sector should be rejected. PCS should follow up 5 November with targeted and sustained strike action in areas where it will hit government finances, such as the Inland Revenue, Customs and Excise, and Driver Vehicle Licensing.
* Offices have been targeted to be shut — 42 in the Department of Work and Pensions
alone. The union should go to them and organise for sustained strike action there.
* The union should organise a national levy of all members to fund strike pay to those on sustained strikes.
