The following details have been
supplied by PCS DWP Group:
DWP have today (16th September
2013) announced five
separate voluntary exit schemes in various parts of DWP Operations. The schemes
are targeted at certain groups of staff in particular grades. Management expect
up to 1,700 jobs to be lost across Operations as a result of this exercise. PCS is completely opposed to these savage and unnecessary job cuts.
Management claim that they
are forced to run this exercise due to the severe financial and staffing
pressures they face, especially from April 2014. Specifically management claim
that they have to lose staff because work volumes are falling and they have to
live within a staffing budget that has been arbitrarily cut by 10%. Welfare
reform changes have also, management claim, led to a need for less staff.
However the uncertainty over when further welfare changes, such as Universal
Credit and increased conditionality, may happen make the longer term staffing
picture very unclear.
Scheme One
All AAs in DWP Operations
are eligible to apply for this scheme, apart from those at Blackpool Disability
Centre. Management want 750 AAs to leave under this scheme. This would equate
to around 30% of the total numbers of AAs in Operations.
Scheme Two
Those eligible to apply for
this scheme are:
- HEOs and SEOs in Benefit Directorate Centres, apart from those in Disability Centres.
- Any EO or HEO in Contact Centre Services, apart from those in NMT
- Surplus AO staff in Contracted Customer Services
Management want 170 staff to
leave under from these areas.
Scheme Three
Those eligible to apply for
this scheme are any AO, EO, HEO SEO or Grade 7 in Operational Excellence
Directorate who work in either Change Delivery or Operational Infrastructure,
or who are surplus. Management want 240 staff to leave under this scheme.
Scheme Four
Those eligible to apply for
this scheme are:
- AO, EO, HEO, SEO & Grade 7 staff in DWP Visiting. Management want up to 200 staff to leave from this area.
- AO and EO staff in certain specified Job Centres in four Districts (Cumbria & Lancashire, Kent, Essex and West of Scotland). Management are seeking very small numbers from these offices.
- Any surplus staff in WSD
- AO, EO and HEO staff badged to transfer to the new Customer Compliance structure from 1st October 2013. Management are seeking around 100 staff to leave from this area.
- EO and HEO staff in Child Maintenance group badged as Legal Enforcement, Investigators, Inspectors or Court Presenting Officers. Management want 46 staff to leave from this area.
Scheme Five
Eligibility in these areas
will vary by grade and location. Management want 98 staff to leave from these
areas.
Terms of the Schemes
The Group Executive
Committee (GEC) pressed management for the most generous terms possible to be
made available but DWP have instead offered the standard terms for voluntary
exits. The terms on offer are therefore the same as have been offered in other
recent voluntary exit schemes.
Management want to be able
to allow as many as possible of those who apply to leave. However, where
schemes are over-subscribed, there will be a selection exercise using the
standard DWP workforce management criteria of performance, competencies and
attendance. In addition business needs may dictate that an individual will not
be allowed to leave in particular circumstances.
Management are emphasising
that all of these schemes are entirely voluntary and are not planned as any
kind of precursor to a move towards compulsory redundancies.
Vicinity
These schemes are scattered
around a large number of DWP offices. In many cases there will be sites where
some staff are eligible to apply and yet other staff in the same grade but on a
different section are not eligible to apply. The GEC pressed management to
widen the schemes to avoid this happening, but they refused
PCS Response – More staff not Less
PCS is completely opposed to these savage and
unnecessary job cuts. We firmly believe that DWP needs more staff not less.
Over 20,000 staff have left DWP since 2010 and the department should not allow
any more to leave. PCS has of course made our opposition to this scheme
very clear to management.
Members are already working
under excessive pressure to keep on top of their workloads with the staff that
we have now. This pressure and stress will increase even more if 1,700 staff
are allowed to leave, on top of the normal turnover of staff and with no
recruitment or promotion planned.
The GEC believe the
department is being over-reliant on recent dips in unemployment to justify
these staff cuts. Our view is that it is still very unclear whether the long
term trend is for unemployment to fall and the risks of further increases
remain all too real. In fact, in many regions, unemployment is actually still
increasing. It is also madness for any jobs to be cut when, as we are repeatedly
told remains the case, DWP has to convert 7 million claims to Universal Credit
by the end of 2017.
