Vote ‘Yes’ For Strike Action

Civil service strike ballots

Vote ‘Yes’ For Strike Action

No To Low Pay

OVER 100,000 members of civil service union PCS are voting
in a strike ballot over pay. Staff in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP),
the Home Office, Department for Constitutional Affairs, Treasury Solicitors and
the Prison Service are involved in a co-ordinated strike ballot, following
derisory pay deals.

86,000 DWP staff had a 2.6% increase imposed on them, with
an unfair and devisive performance-related pay scheme (PDS).

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka pointed out: "The
people being balloted on industrial action aren’t your bowler-hatted Sir
Humphreys. These people are very low paid, delivering key front-line services
and in many cases, in receipt of the very benefits they hand out."

Under pressure from the union, management withdrew one of
the worst aspects of PDS, the ‘five-day rule’. This would have meant loss of
performance bonuses through absences from work for things like maternity or
bereavement leave.

But this rule could be revived next year in a different
form. In the DWP, 55-70% of workers would not get a bonus anyway, under the PDS
scheme. There was a 97% vote against PDS in an earlier ballot.

One in four civil servants earn less than £13,750 a year,
so the imposition of a below-inflation pay deal, with strings attached, has
angered thousands. The ballots run from 5-19 January and strike action could
start at the end of January.

In a separate ballot at the end of last year, 91% voted to
endorse the PCS leadership’s campaign to return to national pay bargaining and
to defend civil service pensions. A decisive majority vote for co-ordinated
strike action over pay would be a big step forward in the campaign against
poverty pay and a blow to management’s belligerent attitude.