Improving members pay is always a priority for PCS, along with the defence of well-resourced, democratically accountable public services. The coalition government’s austerity programme of public sector pay freezes and cuts is on a scale never seen before in this country, even under Thatcher.
The think tank Resolution Foundation’s (RF) analysis of Osborne’s 2011 budget offers worrying parallels. Its research has found that those already struggling on low to middle earnings will see their real incomes fall by between 4% and 7% in real terms over the next year. Unlike other analysis since the budget, RF research focuses on middle and low-income groups and factors in not only tax and benefit changes, but also the latest official predictions from the Office for Budget Responsibility on how wages will lag behind increases in the cost of living.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) says the pressure on household budgets is the worst since the 1970s. PCS Members are facing a double detriment as not only is the cost of living rising, but their pay and progression to the maxima of the grade is being frozen. These attacks come while members are also facing the threat of job losses and reductions in the value of their pensions through both the freeze and increased employee contributions.
Members struggling to cope with debt
The devastating impact of these changes is revealed in a March 2011 research report – Members Incomes Survey - jointly commissioned by PCS and Unison that examined the combined effects of the public sector pay freeze and wider welfare reforms. Struggling to cope with debt was a common concern raised by respondents.
One respondent said: “I am constantly overdrawn and paying overdraft fees to pay debts and survive.”
Another member said: “We have fallen deeper and deeper into debt and it is highly likely that I will never be able to pay the full amount in six years’ time and will have to sell the house with not enough money left over to purchase another property.”
Pay is political
The neo-liberal programme chancellor George Osborne announced in his 2011 budget has its origins in 1970s Chile. After the coup that removed socialist president Salvador Allende free-market guru Milton Friedman and the ‘Chicago economists’ advised dictator General Pinochet to cut public spending and let the private sector take over. Similarly, Osborne said in the June 2010 budget that he wanted “an economy where the state does not take almost half of all our national income, crowding out private endeavour”.
Under Friedman’s influence Pinochet abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatised the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and business profits, slashed public employment and pay, privatised state industries and banks and ran a fiscal surplus. The country took a giant leap forward ... into bankruptcy and depression.
Challenge pay policy and co-ordinate action
In her book The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein exploded the myth that global free market capitalism triumphs democratically. Pinochet needed a military coup to pursue his policies and David Cameron and Nick Clegg have used an economic crisis to unleash a right-wing and anti-democratic ideology on the British people. In response, 500,000 people, including more than 30,000 PCS members, marched through London for a rally in Hyde Park in mass demonstration of public anger.
Despite conventional wisdom and propaganda to the contrary, our current crisis was caused by the most reckless and greedy bankers the private sector has ever produced, not the civil servants, teachers and nurses the government is forcing to carry the blame.
PCS is working with a broad coalition against the cuts, and the hugely popular booklet ‘There is an alternative’ explains the unnecessary nature of the cuts agenda. Of course, pay is at the heart of these campaigns and as general secretary Mark Serwotka rightly argues: “We need to challenge the pay policy and co-ordinate our action.
“Winning the argument is not enough – it is about winning decent pay for our members.”
