From a civil service union rep
It’s 07:30 on a Tuesday morning and I’m reading through ‘production’ stats. I’m a member of the PCS union, workplace rep and socialist, working in the Retirement Services Directorate (RSD). Management so kindly allows me to get the same stats as them, to prove they aren’t running a call-centre sweatshop, to prove the ones who come to their rep to complain about the awful work environment are the ‘slackers’ in the stats sheet.
What do I see on that spreadsheet? I see the names of people who started the same day as me missing. Too many missing. I see the names of new hires only filling half of the ones who left RSD for another job, any job. Very few went to a different civil service department, and even less found a ‘promotion’ to a job that is above minimum wage. I see over half the list of names as people for whom I’ve fought for workplace adjustments to help them handle the workload and unrelenting stress. I see colleagues and friends who have used up all their paid sick days and most of their vacation days to prevent breaking down.
I see the single parents that are, despite working a full-time job in the civil service, forced to apply for Universal Credit in order to feed, clothe and house their family. There are single adults who would love to move out of their parents’ loft except… they can’t afford rent. They are not accepted due to their income, specifically on rental applications. There are many people I know who cannot afford to get into the office the last week or so before payday. They can’t afford public transport, or petrol, or parking.
One name, a fellow who is over 6 feet tall and burly, plays footie on weekends with buddies. He spent a good ten minutes in our union office, trying to not show tears and telling me he can’t take it any longer. He’s going to break and he can’t because his mother is sick and at home, and he’s her carer.
I see all the people I could not make the work environment safer for, more caring, and my heart just aches.
These are your civil servants helping thousands of pensioners a week, with a call volume of anywhere from 4,000 to 7,000. Some RSD employees handle 120-150 calls per day. Their voices are raw at the end of a shift. They croak, not speak.
Backlog
They took enough Pension Credit applications at the end of last year to cause a backlog in actually processing those applications to 62 working days. That’s due to the shocking Labour policy to cancel universal winter fuel allowance. Pensioners would need to qualify to receive it by having an active Pension Credit benefit. Labour just up and announced it, despite not having enough staff employed to handle the influx of calls that was almost immediate. The phone lines became so busy that a pensioner, wanting to ensure they could pay their bills, could spend four hours on hold, only to find themselves abruptly disconnected, and having to start again the next day. Is this how pensioners deserve to be treated? Is this how tax-paying, minimum wage civil servants deserve to be treated?
This is what those stats sheets do not tell you. They don’t tell you how many pensioners couldn’t get through to make a Pension Credit application before this winter’s 21 December cut-off. These are people who cannot heat their home, cannot turn on their cooker to make hot food, and probably have little in the larder.
These are the many people who try to get to the grocery store that offers pensioners a hot meal for £1 and then sit there longer for the warmth. People get substantially less than working minimum wage from their pension.
Those are the people my colleagues and members speak with every day. They take calls from people asking for their pension to be double-checked because they get so little.
I’m not a government finance expert, but if a normal worker like myself can see that this policy would cause some of the most vulnerable people in society and some of the lowest-paid workers in the civil service such immense stress and chaos, surely our esteemed elected officials would have known this too.
The Starmer government is failing in its duty of care to pensioners and staff alike. There is no excuse for the continuation and expansion of Tory policies and plans that betray pensioners, working-class and disabled people.
Socialists need to be more active now than ever, reaching out to those they see in distress, in need and bringing some bit of hope that things can change, that there is a solution. Socialist trade union reps will be stepping up their recruitment efforts and bring people into the fold of both the trade unions and the Socialist Party. We need to organise those around us and agitate for the needed socialist change.
