No way to postcode pay

Postcode pay is the next step in the government’s austerity agenda and attacks the poorest areas in the UK.

Postcode pay will mean that the government split public sector pay into bands depending on where you live. This means nurses, teachers and civil servants will face a pay freeze that could last more than a decade.

Please send this action to your MP and encourage them to sign EDM 55 tabled by Tony Lloyd that opposes the government’s plans to introduce postcode pay.

Fair Deal in Defence

Cuts cost

Our union knows from our extensive campaigning that defence cuts cost. We have seen posts cut but their outputs remain. We see members leave the department but their workload passed onto others and we have witnessed sites closing but their projects simply moved to a remaining site.

The time has come for those of us who remain – the survivors – to campaign and fight for the best possible terms and conditions as we try and give the best possible support to the front line.

Fair Deal

The ‘Fair Deal’ campaign is seeking to ensure that civilian defence workers are treated properly from now on. The campaign objectives are -

 

·       To give job security for all civilian defence workers. To give the best support to the front line, we need a period of certainty for defence workers and that means no imposed redundancies or relocations.

·       Where the trade unions have identified savings e.g. £100n in FATS contract, these savings must be offset against headcount reductions.

·       The UK Living wage (£7.20 per hour outside London and £8.30 in London) is paid to all civilian defence workers and that the department sets a precedent and doesn’t introduce any form of regional pay as it recognises all civilian defence workers work towards giving best possible support to the front line.

·       To stop the ideological move to privatise defence services and review all previous transfers of work including all the defence PFI contracts that we are tied into for 30 or 40 years..

·       To get the proper level of consultation on all aspects of activities that affect the working lives of staff. The appropriate level of facility time should be provided for this.

·       Agreement with the department that members will not work out of grade or cover work from vacant posts.

·       Equality of opportunity and a respect for diversity in all MoD activities.

·       The above principles to be replicated across private sector areas of defence.

Difficult Period

SDSR proposed the MoD will be at a steady state position by 2020. In the eight year period till then, our unions’ members will be asked to deliver this steady state with vastly less numbers than were in the department at the time of the SDSR announcement in October 2010. It is not too much to ask that we are treated fairly and equitably as we try to get through this very difficult period.

Government Civil Service reform in nothing more than another attack on its employees

The civil service reform plan published today is "built on sand" because it is impossible to cut more than 100,000 jobs and improve services to the public.

The plan confirms the huge and unsustainable number of job cuts planned by this government, which means more use of the private sector, allowing profit margins to drive decisions about the provision of services instead of public need.

It will do nothing to address the major concerns of civil and public servants, that their jobs are being slashed, their pay is being cut and their pensions are being raided to pay off a deficit caused by the recession and bailing out the banks.

And instead of accepting that their political choices are making our economic situation worse and damaging the public services we all rely on, ministers appear to want to blame civil servants and claim that the answer is to cut the civil service down to record levels.

The My Civil Service Pension 'mutual' model mentioned by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude in his Commons speech has been imposed on an unwilling workforce and has led to staff there taking industrial action. A recent survey by a respected civil service newspaper found there was no appetite for mutualism among civil servants of all grades.

The most recent obvious example of the problems caused by cutting staff is the chaos at our borders and the knock-on effects across the rest of the UK Border Agency and the Home Office as senior managers continue to adopt panic measures to move staff onto passport checks from other areas such as customs and immigration casework.

Elsewhere, HM Revenue and Customs has faced criticism from an influential committee of MPs for ploughing ahead with plans to cut 10,000 more jobs by 2015, when the case for investment in tax collection is obvious. The 55,000 PCS members in the department will be on strike on Monday 25 June against these cuts and the threat of privatisation.

This month the union's 8,000 members in the Department for Transport - including staff in the 39 closure-threatened DVLA local offices, driving examiners and coastguards - are taking part in rolling strikes against cuts to jobs, offices and services.

The union is also central to ongoing national co-ordinated industrial action against the cuts to public sector pensions, which will mean civil and public servants having to pay more and work up to eight years longer for tens of thousands of pounds less in retirement.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "This plan is built on sand because cutting more than 100,000 jobs and allowing the pursuit of private profit to dictate what we do is entirely incompatible with providing the kind of good quality public services that we all rightly expect and demand.

"Instead of seeking to blame civil servants, ministers should recognise that austerity isn't working and, far from making our economic situation better, it is their political choices that are causing misery for millions of people in this country."

Daft, Damaging and Demoralising

Addressing the Royal United Services Institute in London, Mr Hammond said in future there would be greater use of part-time reserves and private contractors.

The British Army is being cut from 102,000 soldiers to 82,000 under SDSR and today Mr Hammond said: "A regular Army of 82,000 will have a different structure to one of 102,000. And some units inevitably will be lost or will merge."

He said in future there would be greater use of part-time reserves and private contractors and it would mean "thinking innovatively about how combat service support is provided" and "using more systematically the skills available in the reserves and from our contractors".

As we continue to see on a daily basis the demands on our armed forces do not diminish and they deserve support that is capable of supporting them on the front line.

Our armed forces are the best of the best, yet this announcement smacks of being the cheapest of the cheap.

Our armed forces put their lives on the line and the government should be supporting them with dedicated resources that retain delivery and risk management within the Ministry of Defence.

If the government is serious about supporting the front line it should review how many non deployable personnel posts could be filled by civil servants which on average could reduce costs by a third. End the use of expensive private sector contracts that deliver nothing above or beyond what can be delivered in-house and finally stop political based cuts that are decimating our defence capability as well as jobs in some of the most remote and economically poor areas of this country.

We want our armed forces to be the best of best and this can be achieved by them being supported by military and civilian staff.

Daft, Damaging and Demoralising sums up the latest announcement.