Callum Joyce, Southern Socialist Party
PCS union members at the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) have taken six days of strike action to oppose a derisory, below-inflation pay offer from the arms-length government body.
Socialist Party members visited their picket line in Crawley near Gatwick Airport to offer solidarity and to discuss the way forward for the dispute.
Despite providing an important public service – including among other things being responsible for providing financial protection for consumers if a profiteering airline company ever goes bust – these workers are not being fairly compensated, reporting that their pay has been repeatedly undermined through years of below-inflation pay ‘rises’. What they have been offered this year does not even reach the level of the already insufficient pay mandate authorised by the government for the rest of the civil service.
Despite many of the workers living outside of the immediate area due to working from home, many had travelled for hours to attend a small but defiant picket line, engaging with other workers still going into work and discussing with them about the need to join the union. Strikers reported that they have seen an increase in union membership since the beginning of the dispute.
Prospect union also organises workers in the CAA and they have previously taken strike action on the same day as PCS members as part of their own pay dispute. Unfortunately they have not organised any further action at this stage. Prospect agreeing to coordinate future strikes with the PCS would be a positive step to unite the struggle across the workforce and apply the maximum pressure to the bosses to pay the workers what they deserve.
The employer has now agreed to further negotiations as a result of the strike action, but strikers said they would consider further action if a decent pay offer is not forthcoming.
This small but important dispute is part of the greater battle taking place across the civil service and the public sector as a whole to oppose Starmer and Reeves’s attempts to make workers pay for the developing economic crisis through low wages and job cuts.
