The following has been supplied by PCS DWP Group:
Announcements were made to staff on the 4th March 2014 following talks with PCS on Monday 3rd March 2014 that Steria/Shared Services Connected Limited (SSCL) intend to cut at least 400 jobs through the closure of ex DWP sites at Sheffield, Cardiff and the ex Environment Agency site in Leeds. Work adding up to the equivalent of about 200 jobs will be off-shored to India. The Group Executive committee has agreed to do everything possible to fight these office closures and job cuts.
SSCL propose to close the sites at Sheffield (239 ex DWP), Cardiff (105 ex DWP) and Leeds (68 ex EA covered by Unison) by 31st October 2014.
At the same time SSCL are reviewing and reducing around another 100 staff in corporate services across all sites: Defra, York and Alnwick; DWP, Blackpool and Newcastle; EA Peterborough. This amounts to a reduction of half the workforce.
A DWP Briefing was issued on the 4 March to all DWP members in Shared Services and GEC members were present at Cardiff and Sheffield when the announcements were made. A press release was issued and picked up by the BBC.
PCS has demanded full negotiations. Steria has agreed to the legal 90 days consultation for redundancy from 3 March. PCS will be opposing any office closures. If closures cannot be stopped PCS will demand that in line with the civil service protocols all steps are taken to avoid compulsory redundancies by using voluntary redundancy and redeployment back into the civil service or other parts of Steria.
However, SSCL have said yesterday that they expect to need to use compulsory redundancies. Yet there is work for Sheffield, Cardiff and Leeds. It is wrong to send that work to India to get it done on the cheap to boost SSCL profits and make staff here redundant. PCS will fight to prevent compulsory redundancy.
These PCS members were privatised by the government and DWP management on 1 November 2013. The SSCL office closure and job cuts timetable is intended to allow SSCL to close sites and make people redundant by 31 October, exactly a year after the transfer into the private sector. At the same time they will be recruiting 200 staff into the sites in India.
All the local MPs, including Nick Clegg, have been briefed. His constituency is in Sheffield which will be losing over 200 jobs at the same time as they are recruiting a similar number in India. We will be lobbying Nick Clegg.
Further talks continue with SSCL on Thursday 6th March when PCS will oppose the office closures and job cuts.
Many of the staff in Shared Services have worked in the civil service since the 1980’s. They are longstanding traditional civil servants with a deep commitment to public service and the public service ethos. The government knew that Steria/SSCL would make staff redundant and would offshore work. Even worse so did DWP management. It is shameful that DWP management deliberately and knowingly handed over hundreds of loyal hardworking long serving civil servants in the full knowledge that they would quickly face redundancy. PCS members will not forget this.
