Home Office staff hit back at immigration schemes with threat of strikes
Home Office staff will consider taking strike action if they are forced to implement immigration policies they believe are unlawful, the PCS union has said.
Civil servants have hit back at the Home Secretary’s Rwanda scheme and small boats bill, as internal rows over the legitimacy of the policies could now escalate into an industrial dispute the union has warned.
Suella Braverman’s hostile plans to detain and deport asylum seekers arriving in the UK by small boats has caused widespread criticism, with human rights groups condemning the scheme as illegal by putting people’s lives at risk.
Home Office employees have previously aired their views against the policy in staff meetings and internal message boards.
During a Home Office online Q&A in March, staff launched a flood of complaints against the policy with one employee stating, ‘I’ve never been so embarrassed or ashamed to work for the department I once loved.’
Staff tasked with implementing the policy will not ‘just sit back and take’ the Rwanda deal and new small boats bill, the Independent has reported, as Paul O’Connor, head of bargaining at PCS, told the paper that the government is ‘fighting a losing battle’, both on the policy itself and also with their own workforce.
O’Connor added there would be ‘no stomach amongst our members’ in implementing the bill and that members would ‘inevitably’ come to their trade union to explore recourse against it, which could include industrial action.
It comes as tens of thousands of civil servants in 132 government departments are already in an on-going strike calling for better pay and conditions that could last until the end of the year.
Speaking at the PCS conference last week, O’Connor called for the continued defence of refugees and asylum seekers and reflected on the proud history of the trade movement and workers in fighting for justice.
He referenced factory workers at the Scottish Rolls Royce warehouse who grounded the air force of Chilean dictator Pinochet in the 1970s in a show of solidarity.
“We rightly lionise those heroes in the past who have taken a principled stance against injustice and oppressive forces,” said O’Connor.
“So we should equally pay tribute to those in our midst who have taken the same stance here.
“Ordinary workers in the Home Office who have to implement these reprehensible policies, who said no.”
Since the announcement of Braverman’s controversial immigration laws, the PCS union has been working with Care4Calais on a campaign to stop the Rwanda deportation policy and has also taken legal action against it.
The union has written up an alternative to the Rwanda policy, backing a safe passage visa scheme for refugees. The paper lays out a visa system which would be similar to that set up in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Among the recent high-profile critics of the government’s Illegal Migration Bill, which would see migrants deported to Rwanda, are Gary Lineker and the Archbishop and Canterbury, with the later slamming the scheme as ‘morally unacceptable’.
Hannah Davenport is trade union reporter at Left Foot Forward
(Photo credit: UK Home Office / Creative Commons)
Left Foot Forward’s trade union reporting is supported by the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust
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