I am writing to clarify matters relating to your response to a question by Alistair Carmichael MP at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday on the need for fair pay for our members in the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA).
You spoke of the need to get together to reach solutions to the disputes which are unfortunately occurring across the Civil Service and NDPBs, and indeed the wider public sector. I agree with that but, as PCS has repeatedly made clear, such discussions will only be fruitful if the rigid cap on pay settlements that your Government has imposed is removed.
Our members do not take industrial action lightly. It is a very difficult decision for low paid public servants to take. PCS members across the Civil Service and related bodies have been driven to take action because their management cannot breach the centralised pay cap and staff are expected to accept below inflation pay offers at a time of rapidly increasing prices. Indeed, disputes are breaking out across the public sector for the same reason.
In the civil service there is double discrimination. First, like the rest of the public sector we suffer from the public sector pay cap but, secondly, and uniquely to Civil Servants, within the pay cap there is less money available for basic cost of living pay increases as the cost of incremental pay progression has to be funded from within the pay award. For the rest of the public sector, the recorded pay award is only the cost of the basic pay increase, and the cost of incremental pay progression is not costed from within any pay cap.
Staff in the MCA are dedicated to the provision of a vital emergency service. Yet coastguard watch assistants, who actively participate in search planning and other duties in response to 999 calls, only earn the equivalent of the national minimum wage. Moreover, because of the government's pay cap, management cannot implement the results of a comparability study which recommended parity of pay with other emergency services.
You also spoke of long-term pay agreements. You mentioned both the DWP and HMRC as having three year agreements on pay. This is not true in both cases.
There is no settlement in the DWP. Our members in the DWP had imposed on them a three year pay package that can neither be described as an increase (this year 40% of them receive no increase on their pay scales) nor an agreement. Our members rejected the average increase of 1% per year imposed by departmental management. This remains the case, and we are still pursuing an increase which gives members at least the rate of inflation consolidated on their pay scales. The dispute in the DWP, as elsewhere across the Civil Service and related bodies, continues.
Meanwhile, the last three year agreement in HMRC came to an end on 31 May 2008. We understand that the parameters set by management for an offer this year will mean basic pay increases of no more than 2.4% for the vast majority of staff. With RPI increasing at 4.6% per annum, this is completely unacceptable.
Our members in these three areas are suffering cuts in their living standards because of your government's policy. On 15`'' July, I and colleagues from the Council of Civil Service Unions met Yvette Cooper to press her on the need for a settlement on pay which was fair to all of our members. I hope she is able to come back to us with solutions which address the erosion of pay by inflation, and the unfairness of the pay system in the Civil Service, so that we can avoid further industrial action right across our public sector membership.
