Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has reneged on a promise of further talks about changes the government wants to make to the civil service compensation scheme. As a result the union’s national executive committee has decided to call a ballot as the coalition’s changes proposed in the Superannuation Bill would cut the entitlements of the overwhelming majority.
The union is recommending members reject the government’s proposals to cut redundancy payments.
It is important that members to vote ‘yes’ to reject the government’s cuts to the compensation scheme and support our national ‘There is an alternative’ campaign to invest in the services and jobs our communities need. Building a large ‘yes’ vote is vital to strengthen us in the fight to defend jobs, pensions and pay and to protect our hard-earned rights.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “Instead of forcing through legislation which would seriously worsen our members’ redundancy entitlement to make job cuts on the cheap, the government needs to sit down and listen to what we are proposing with a view to reaching a negotiated agreement. At any time, this would be a disgraceful way to treat staff, whose rights the High Court has twice ruled should be protected. But the government is forcing through cuts when it is also planning to make tens of thousands of civil servants redundant.”
PCS is campaigning in the media, in workplaces and in parliament to stop cuts in jobs, pensions, pay and public services. Industrial action may be necessary, as a last resort, but that would be the subject of a separate ballot.
It is also important to continue to grow support for a national demonstration organised by the TUC in Hyde Park on 26 March next year. PCS had argued strongly the TUC should organise a national event in November or December, because of the scale of the cuts. Despite this not being agreed our union’s members played an active role in successful action across the UK during the week of the spending review and subsequently.
Protests by students and the shutdown of Vodafone stores by demonstrators show what can be done comparatively quickly through effective and imaginative organisation. The more protests there are the higher the price for this coalition government which is making so many vicious, ideologically-driven cuts which will devastate communities and throw a generation on the scrapheap.
