'Whilst we’re assured talks are imminent, they haven’t materialised yet'
Strikes by workers from across the civil service will only ramp up throughout the year if the government continues to hold off pay talks, says Public Commercial and Services (PCS) President Fran Heathcote.
In an interview with LFF, Heathcote said the government has told them that pay talks are ‘imminent’ but that the union are still waiting, as civil servants get ready to further escalate their strike action.
Thousands of civil servants are continuing to strike this month in the latest round of targeted industrial action by the PCS union, with another all-out walkout planned for 28, April.
The government has not shifted from their offer of a 2% pay rise for civil servants, which Heathcote highlighted as the lowest pay offer anywhere in the public sector.
The latest round of action this month will see members from the Passport Office, National Highways, British Library, British Museum, the Animal and Plant Health Agency, DVSA, DVLA and Government Digital Service all on strike.
Fran said their demands aren’t over ambition or exaggerated, but that their employer, the government, shield their employees from the cost of living crisis and provide some recompense.
She said their message is simple, they just want the government to open talks with them.
“The idea is that we will continue this dispute and in fact the dispute will escalate, but that’s not where we want to be,” said Heathcote.
“Where we want to be is sitting around the table talking to the government and trying to find a solution to all of this.
“At a time of a cost of living crisis, we expect the government as our employer to shield us from that and to provide some recompense.”
Heathcote said discussions have been had with PCS and the Cabinet Office about getting into talks, and that the union were assured it’s being considered by ministers. However she added that, unless there’s something ‘concrete’ to discuss, ‘it’s just words’.
The union’s current strategy of taking targeted strike action is being sustained with a levy to ensure they don’t run out of money and so the action can continue and in fact ramp up, said Heathcote.
As their six-month strike mandate runs out in May, PCS members are currently being reballoted for further industrial action, with Fran confident they will win the reballot which would see strikes continue throughout the summer, if the government fails to negotiate.
According to Fran, the union are receiving submissions almost every week from different areas of the civil service wanting to take action, as Fran said, staff ‘can’t go on like this’.
“Members recognize that the only way we’re going to shift the government is by pushing back against what they’re proposing.
“We’ve got new submissions coming in for further targeted action almost every week, and all of those are being authorized.
“So, the time for the government to get around the table is now.”
She added that a 2% pay offer is not something their members were going to accept and that the dispute was not going to just go away as members have faced over a decade of pay cuts.
Heathcote said: “I remember 30 years ago when I got a job in the civil service, my dad saying to me, civil service, job for life. And of course that’s how it was seen.”
But cuts to pay, attacks on redundancy terms and the government chipping away at the civil service pension scheme have all contributed to a very different feeling, evident as staff move to the private sector.
“We haven’t seen a meaningful pay increase in over a decade. And what that leads to is people seeing adverts for supermarket staff, McDonald’s staff, staff that work in catering, being paid an awful lot more than what was a respected profession people went into.”
Heathcote added: “We’re not in competition with the private sector, it’s not a race to the bottom.
“We want everybody to have a cost of living increase, and the way to do that is to boost the economy, and the way to do that is to invest in public services and making sure that public services deliver a decent, quality service.
“Our members are seeing the offers coming in with other public sector workers currently in disputes and are quite rightly asking, when are we going to get into talks?”
Hannah Davenport is trade union reporter at Left Foot Forward
(Photo credit: PCS / Youtube)
Left Foot Forward’s trade union reporting is supported by the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust
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