Civil service jobs under the cosh

Last week the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) announced the lost of almost 400 jobs from the Pension Service and Jobcentres.

PCS Member North East

These jobs will be lost through targeted offers of early release. PCS was not consulted on this and it comes at a time when the union is campaigning for many temporary posts in DWP to be made permanent.

The terms on offer are, for most staff, made under the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS) that the employer sought to abolish but which remains in place as a result of action taken by PCS.

But future redundancies and exit packages are likely to be under the coalition government’s planned legislation which would limit all payments under the CSCS for voluntary exits to a maximum of 15 months pay.

PCS is fighting this through parliamentary and legal action.

Although this exercise is a voluntary one, many PCS members rightly see it as one which attempts to use the possibility of changes to the CSCS as a means of pushing hard working and in many cases long serving staff out of the department earlier.