No Minister - civil servants resist cuts

Last week a ballot of 270,000 members of the public service union PCS resulted in a resounding vote for action to defend the Civil Service compensation scheme.

Some 63.3 per cent voted for strike action and 81.3 per cent for action short of a strike.

Gordon Brown has made a pre-election political pledge to "save" £500 million across the civil and public services.

And to achieve this he is attempting to slash the redundancy entitlement for hard-working civil and public servants, coupled with a plan to cull up to 100,000 jobs after the general election.

This is an additional 100,000 on top of the 90,000 jobs already cut.

The results have already been obvious - poorer services, office closures, delays in benefit and tax processing and temporary staff in place of permanent workers.

Before the recession, 30,000 jobs in the Department of Work and Pensions were culled and many high street jobcentres closed.

As unemployment continues to rise, the same department is forced to hire thousands of untrained and unskilled temporary staff.

Over 20,000 civil servants have been cut in Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. Local customer-facing tax offices across the country are being closed - 130 throughout Britain.

Yet tax avoidance and evasion continues to escalate. Some £130 billion of the £170bn public deficit could be met by collecting all the tax that is owed.

It's almost unthinkable to imagine what will remain of the public sector after the election, with plans to cut a further 100,000 jobs on the cheap.

The Civil Service compensation scheme (CSCS) as it currently stands provides a fair, negotiated system of compensation for those who chose to leave.

It has been in place since 1972 and even when it was last reviewed under Margaret Thatcher in 1987 it was thought to be an appropriate scheme.

All 90,000 workers who have left the Civil Service since Brown's first announcement have been protected by the CSCS.

Now, many PCS members stand to lose tens of thousands of pounds in redundancy entitlements which they have accrued over many years of loyal service.

The changes will see some staff robbed of up to a third of their entitlement if they are forced out of their job.

Far from the Cabinet Office spin about "reforms" to end fat-cat pay-offs for senior managers, those earning £20,000 or more will be worse off under these proposals.

Three-quarters of all civil servants earn less than the average British wage.

These changes are not based on fairness but on making it cheaper to sack the people who keep this country running.

It's not so much a swipe at fat cats at the top but a targeted attack on the majority of skinny cats earning less than the average wage.

Our response is an intensive month-long strategy of industrial action and political pressure beginning with a 48-hour strike on March 8-9.

In Scotland from next Monday almost 30,000 PCS members will take part in the national strike action which will disrupt the work of tax offices, jobcentres, the Scottish Courts Service, the opening of galleries and museums, the coastguard service and the Scottish Parliament.

PCS members all over Scotland have written to their MPs, turned up to local constituency surgeries and joined a mass lobby at Westminster on Wednesday to send a clear message to politicians that, whatever the outcome of the next election, civil and public servants will not accept the ripping up of their accrued redundancy rights as a precursor to a mass jobs cull after the election.

Over 150 MPs from all political parties have signed Katy Clark MP's early day motion supporting the PCS campaign - an immense achievement for any EDM.

This means a third of the total number of eligible MPs have signed up.

In the Scottish Parliament, Falkirk West MP Cathy Peattie has lodged a similarly worded members' motion.

But there remains a number of politicians, Scottish Labour MPs among them, who continue to wring their hands and decry PCS for threatening industrial action this close to a general election as if it is us who are picking the fight with the government.

It is not the workers but the Labour government that is running the risk of alienating its own workforce by forcing through a scheme that will allow the incoming government of whatever colour to cut up to 100,000 civil and public service jobs on the cheap and damage vital public services on which we all rely.

In the fading days of this parliament the view from deep within the Westminster tearooms is perhaps cynical.

In order to save their own jobs, today's MPs might wish to join us on the picket lines outside government offices in their constituencies on Monday and Tuesday and, better still, sign the EDM 129.

Following our tremendous ballot result, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka has written to Cabinet Office Minister Tessa Jowell and Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell to seek talks on an improved offer and to convey PCS willingness to go to conciliation service Acas.

MPs keen to avert a damaging month of industrial unrest at the heart of government in the run-up to the election should be encouraging Jowell to take up this reasonable offer.

These cynical attacks on low-paid public-sector workers come at a time when many MPs are preparing to stand down from Parliament with huge compensation settlements. Ex-Tory Cabinet minister Douglas Hogg MP, who claimed for his moat to be cleaned on expenses, will get a £74,451 pay-out when he stands down at the election, as well as an index-linked pension of £56,000 per year.

Compare that with a 41-year-old civil servant earning £25,000 a year with 20 years' service. They would stand to lose £22,000 in entitlement because of this government attack.

The irony is not lost on our members, when the City and corporate financial institutions continue as normal with their bumper bonuses and golden goodbye culture stretching to six-figure sums for each individual chief executive, which the government does not attempt to rein in, stating that "contracts" have to be honoured.

But from the government's point of view PCS members' contracts appear to be written on a flimsier sort of paper.

Lynn Henderson is Scottish secretary of PCS.