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Department for Work and Pensions staff

Fighting Back Against Low Pay

Members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have reacted furiously to the imposition by management of a miserly and discriminatory pay offer.

Rob Williams, PCS National Executive Committee (NEC), personal capacity

As Janice Godrich, PCS president and a worker in the DWP, said: "The employers' offer works out for me at £174 a year gross and I am an executive grade. For the average admin worker in the DWP it means less than £1 per week after stoppages."

As we reported last week, the offer was imposed just two working days before the result of the PCS ballot on the offer was to be announced. This provoked unofficial walkouts.

PCS members voted by an overwhelming 40,615 (93.18%) to 2,974 (6.82%) to reject. And 96% of the First Division Association, the union that represents the most senior managers in the DWP, also voted to reject.

Ballot

The ballot result reflects the huge anger amongst PCS members in the DWP, which include some of the lowest-paid workers in the public sector.

As Martin at Kingswood Jobcentre, Bristol told the socialist: "This abysmal pay rise does not reflect the hard work we put in to make this department work. We are being made to feel second-class and undervalued."

It also highlights the success of the pay campaign so far conducted by the Left-led PCS DWP Group Executive committee (GEC), which includes nine members of the Socialist Party. Alexis Edwards, from Hackney DWP explained: "A member is my office who always votes 'no' to any management proposals but is a little bit cynical about his fellow workers was elated with the overwhelming 'no' vote against the pay proposals"

The DWP is the civil service department with the largest number of workers, in offices across the country including Jobcentre Plus (the former Social Security offices and Jobcentres), the Pensions Service and the Child Support Agency. PCS has about 88,000 members, about 70% of the workforce, although this figure has grown dramatically during the pay ballot with at least 1,200 new members recruited and more joining daily.

Its senior management is headed by Sir Richard Mottram, the civil service mandarin who, in his previous job heading the Department of Transport, made a very public mess of the Stephen Byers/Martin Sixsmith affair and was forced to take a sideways move to the DWP.

Mottram and his most senior managers' attitude now threatens to ignite not just the biggest dispute in the history of the DWP but across the civil service as PCS nationally launches its campaign to return to national, civil service-wide, pay bargaining.

Civil Servants Build the Fight against Low Pay

THE OFFER of around 2.6% to DWP workers is in effect a pay cut. It involves payments to those on the maximum of the pay scales that will not count for overtime or pension purposes and no progression payments to those below the maximum. A progression system has been promised for the last two years.

The offer also wastes £22 million on performance-related pay (PRP). These payments have increasingly been exposed as divisive in the eyes of PCS members. This has turned to anger because of two features of the current offer.

Departmental management want to reduce PRP payments to any worker who is away from the workplace for more than five days in a year for any reasons other than annual leave or bank holidays. So workers who take paid sick leave, maternity leave, paternity leave and even bereavement leave, will lose out.

Even members of the Territorial Army called up to go to Iraq will lose out.

PRP will also be linked to a new performance and development system (PDS). Under this only a quota of 'top-performing' staff hand-picked by management would be entitled to a PRP bonus with 55% -70% losing out completely.

The campaign to expose the new PDS system has been ably led by PCS Group official and Socialist Party member Dave Burke. PCS balloted its members on PDS at the same time that it balloted on pay. The result was a vote of 42,276 (97.21%) to 1,215 (2.79%) to reject the new system.

The DWP GEC met on 27 November and agreed a programme of action. Negotiations have re-started but the GEC has rightly concluded that these must not be allowed to delay the next stage of the campaign. A series of members' meetings at every workplace will be held between now and Christmas.

The industrial action ballot will start on 5 January. PCS is calling discontinuous action starting with a two-day strike at the end of January. This will be combined with disruptive action short of a strike, aimed at making the DWP 'ungovernable'.

As one Leeds PCS member put it: "We don't want a traditional work to rule, we want a complete FCUK the DWP management campaign".

The proposed action in the DWP coincides with ballots expected to result in votes to reject pay offers by PCS members in other departments including the Home Office, the Prison Service and the Department for Constitutional Affairs.

In total 110,000 PCS members could be in dispute by early 2004. The NEC has launched its national pay campaign against this background. Pay rallies in early November are being followed up by a national pay ballot that includes the demand for an end to low pay and a return to national pay bargaining.

The dispute in the DWP could be settled fairly easily without busting Treasury pay limits - if DWP management dropped their mad PRP and PDS schemes and the Treasury treated civil servants in the same way as other public sector workers, by allowing progression payments in addition to the annual cost of living increase. Many workers would feel their grievances were starting to be addressed and the heat would go out of the situation.

Instead the imposition of the offer has caused outrage and a determination to fight for a fair deal and a decent living wage.