The guest speaker was the PCS DWP Group Secretary, Steve Cawkwell who was a late replacement for the PCS Vice President John McInally.
For those who weren’t there the following may be of interest:
Steve Cawkwell indicated that he first joined the Civil Service in 1974, and his father said to him when he got an interview, that the Civil Service was a good job, a job for life and with promotion prospects and a good pension at the end of it. Well he managed to rise to the rank of AO, so perhaps it wasn’t as rosy a picture as painted but essentially it was true; it was a good job, there were promotion opportunities and the pensions were reasonable.
He said that coming from a working class background of a family that worked on the docks in Hull the job of Civil Servant had status in the community, and therefore it was seen as going up in the world being a Civil Servant.
He said that it was sad and wrong but true that over the decades the role of the Civil Servant and Public Sector worker has been attacked by successive Governments adopting an ethos of Public Sector bad, Private Sector good. He indicated that he does not agree with this.
He stated that after working many years in the Civil Service he is now a PCS employee, and DWP Group Secretary.
Steve indicated that the Public Servants do a good job, and a job that we should be proud of, and part of the job of PCS was to make sure that people were aware of this.
He stated that we faced attacks on pay, cuts in jobs, attacks on pensions and attacks on our conditions of service.
He stated that due to having no pay rise, or one percent pay rises that on average people were 16% worse off in the DWP than they would have been if pay had matched inflation. He advised the meeting that there was a new phrase in society, the working poor, as more and more working people found it difficult to make ends meet.
He indicated that people had to move downwards in terms of the stores that they shopped in, holidays were being cut, and it was becoming difficult for people to pay for petrol for their cars. He stated that this was due the Government’s pay policy.
He stated that it was PCS’s role to fight back against the policy of austerity, that there was a key ballot which closed on 4th March, and explained the importance of members voting “Yes and Yes” in that ballot.
He stated that Industrial Action was always a last resort, but members needed to show that they are prepared to back up negotiations and campaigns.
He explained that PCS had lodged a claim for a pay rise of £1,200 for members to start to try and claw back some of the lost ground in terms of the 16% pay cuts, in real terms.
He then turned to the attacks on conditions staring with privilege leave, which we have had since the end of the last World War. But the attacks didn’t stop there, the employer was looking to remove sick leave provisions, change mobility rules and replace them with mobility rules of what is considered reasonable by the line manager. He said that we should send a clear message of “No to any further erosion of our rights”.
He indicated that the attacks were to do with sending us down the path to privatisation, so that the private sector could find it easier to make a profit out of Government contracts.
Steve then moved on to the question of the increases to pensions contributions, where the Government want us to work longer, pay more and receive less. He stated that this was not acceptable; there should be no cuts, no privatisations.
He contrasted the way that we were being treated to the Bankers, who have been told that they should get bonuses no greater than their salary; he indicated that this was remarkable in comparison to the levels of bonuses that people in the Civil Service receive. He stated that clearly we weren’t all in this together.
He then turned to the state of society, picking up on the parlous state of the high street, where shops were closing down to be replaced by Pound shops, Pay Day loans, and betting shops; breeding on people’s difficulties.
He returned to the workplace and highlighted the role of Trade Unions, explaining that people may not think that they will need help in the workplace, they get on well with their line manager, they may be in good health and they may not have any problems, but things can change very quickly to the opposite and they may then need help. He indicated that the Government was trying to get rid of this help, by hammering down on the facility time that is available for the representatives to help the members. He indicated that PCS opposed the attacks on facility time, legally and collectively.
He explained that our demands in the National Campaign are reasonable for working people that the Government’s policy of Austerity wasn’t working.
He indicated that Austerity was causing difficulty for society, the Government’s policies had lost the AAA rating, and that there would be more misery if they didn’t change policy, especially for young people.
Steve then introduced Universal Credit, which he explained was the Government’s new policy to be introduced over the forthcoming period. He explained that at a meeting with the employer he asked what percentage of the staff working on Universal Credit, will themselves be eligible to claim Universal Credit. He informed the meeting that the reply was 44%, due to the poor rates of pay in the DWP.
He stated that one of the rules of Universal Credit was to ask recipients who were in work, “what they could do to work more hours to get off Universal Credit”, this would include asking this of their fellow colleagues working on Universal Credit. He said that this was insane.
He returned to pay, and said that PCS’s role was to make the Government listen, and this is why there was a need for a good turnout, and good levels of support for “Yes and Yes”. He explained that PCS would offer talks, we are always prepared to talk, but the Government won’t listen, it was our job to make them listen.
He indicated that it would be good if other Unions got involved but that we may have to go it alone and then try and build support from the entire community. He said that there was no need for fatalism or defeatism. He had achieved victories recently in DWP, with the stopping of the compulsory redundancies, in HMRC where the threat of Industrial action brought about extra jobs and likewise in the Home Office.
There was then a lively question and answer session. There are some pictures from the event here and they can also be found on our Facebook page (link on the right of this blog). See below for a 5 minute clip of the session, you may only be able to view this on your home PC, please bear in mind your employer's media policy if you can see it at work:
