Fair Deal in Defence update

Consultative ballot launched

In meetings up and down the country in support of our Fair Deal in Defence campaign, members have been telling us of the impact of defence cuts.

They speak of having to cover for staff that have left the department, on VERs or through resignation. Having to work longer hours, unpaid overtime and work out of grade and having to cut corners to get the job done, now that they can no longer work in a safe and professional manner whilst maintaining support to the front line.

They tell us of their pride in supporting our armed forces, tempered with a growing realisation that their loyalty and commitment is being ruthlessly exploited. No longer are they treated with respect, and a critical component of the defence effort.

And they record a growing sense of anger that their concerns are going unanswered while Ministers and others show them contempt by cutting their pay, terms and conditions whilst lining them up to be sold to the lowest bidder or moved to the other end of the country at the stroke of a Ministers pen.

It’s time to fight back

Our union’s Fair Deal campaign offers an opportunity to start the fight back. We can demand to be treated with dignity and respect, be paid a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work and be free from the threat of enforced redundancy or mobility.

We can demand a living wage, with a return to inflation proofed increases and pay progression, so that all staff earn a decent salary without the need for other jobs. We can demand the return of our bonus monies, stolen by the Secretary of State.

We can demand fair treatment at work, with objectives and targets that are matched to our resources and training to help us progress and improve our performance.

We can demand an end to privatisation, where the interests of defence and those of staff are secondary to the need to make ever increasing profits.

Make your voice heard

Please make sure that you vote in the consultative ballot and attend any meeting organised by your branch to talk about Fair Deal. If your branch has not organised a meeting demand that your branch secretary does so, or contact the group office on the number below to ask a regional liaison officer to chase up arranging a meeting.

Experience from other PCS members shows that when we stand together in support of common objectives, with a determination to back those demands with action, then we will win significant concessions from our employer. That’s why we are confident that we can win for members in the Ministry of Defence.

Vote Yes/Yes

The group executive is asking all members to vote Yes to support our campaign objectives and Yes to backing those objectives with various forms of action, if asked in a subsequent ballot.

Meanwhile we have asked the other defence trade unions to join our Fair Deal campaign, alongside Unite who we believe will also be holding a ballot in October.

Our ballot closes on 18th October. If you haven’t received a ballot paper by 5th October, then please contact the group office.

Have your say

The department is also launching their annual ‘Your Say’ attitude survey on 1st October. Last year’s survey results made grim reading for senior management, with only 17% having confidence in the decisions of senior management; 12% believing that change was well managed and 9% believing that any changes made were usually for the better. Only 32% would recommend the MOD as a place to work, while only 28% believed that the MOD motivated them to meet their objectives.

This year, we are told ‘to save money’, the department is not sending a link to the survey to all staff; rather staff will have to find the survey through a link on the Defence Intranet and then find a code relating to their business unit to enter.

Despite this inconvenience we would urge all members to take the time to complete the Your Say survey and not to hold back on their responses (even though only 18% had any confidence that senior management would listen and 14% saw any changes from the previous survey). Let’s give the new PUS a chance to make a difference!

Uniting against austerity

If the government continues on its destructive course of big spending cuts we face a lost decade making it vital to join the fight against austerity.

The PCS national campaign to defend pensions, jobs, pay and services has been stepped up this summer with action across many workplaces.

The union has a live mandate for strike action and for action short of strike over jobs, pensions and pay. We are discussing national action in the autumn with other unions and raising the question of co-ordinated strike action against government austerity measures at this month’s TUC congress.

The government has pledged to cut 730,000 public sector jobs by 2017 and slash spending by £80 billion. For millions, their jobs, pay and pensions are under threat, as are the local services they use.
UK growth has slumped – meaning the government will have to borrow £150bn more than planned over the current parliament. Last year slow growth cost £34bn more in tax credits and social security costs, and lost more than £51bn of income tax.

The recent PCS pamphlet 'Austerity isn’t working: There is an alternative'argues persuasively that austerity has failed to create jobs or economic growth. As the union predicted in 2010, the government has attacked jobs, pensions and pay, threatened privatisation and attacked and demonised those entitled to welfare. Yet all of this has worsened rather than improved the economy and people's lives and made the UK a more brutal place in which to live.

Unemployment is rising while living standards are falling, especially exorbitant energy bills and increased travel costs. A new study by PCS and Unite shows workers are on average £150 a month worse off and need to borrow £300 a month to keep their heads above water. PCS believes we need to urgently increase pay for the majority otherwise there is going to be a profound and damaging economic segregation.
There is no need for a single job to be cut or a single penny to be taken away from public services. Politics is about choices – and there is always a choice and an alternative.

Weak divided government

This is a very weak, increasingly divided government that can be defeated. Ministers have already been forced into more than 30 major policy U-turns in the two years since the general election.

It is our job to campaign to change the political consensus which threatens everything our movement has ever fought for. We need people to encourage their family, friends and colleagues to join the protests against austerity by marching in London, Glasgow and Belfast on 20 October to show collectively we refuse to be bullied into accepting working longer, paying more and receiving less in retirement. Action by PCS reps and members across the public sector this summer has already shown what can be achieved if we all stand together.

The threat of strike action for better pay by PCS members working for Olympics sponsor Atos IT and Atos Healthcare led to management making a significantly improved offer while the ongoing tax justice campaign by HMRC members has to the department announcing plans to recruit up to 1,000 temporary extra staff.

Hundreds of thousands of people uniting across the UK on marches and rallies on 20 October and on picket lines in the autumn and beyond can help to bring an end to austerity and realise an alternative for the greater good.

MOD Secretary of State robs employees of performance pay

Civil servants have a very specific role, that of implementing government policy.

They are answerable through the civil service code and ensure unbiased continuity of government through successive administrations.

The current government continues to attack the very people who ensure the social infrastructure of this country is up and running. Instead of representing their constituents, too many MP’s prefer political spin and the use of special advisors paid by the public purse.

Staff in the Ministry of Defence (MOD) were today informed, not by the MOD or even their representatives, but rather by the Telegraph and Daily Mail that the MOD under Ministerial direction was to rip up their people strategy and steal a third of their performance pay.

Performance pay was brought into the civil service as a government directive, supported by the conservatives as an incentiviser under the free labour market ideology.

That ideology is now to destroy the civil service and the services they provide as they are made to pay for the folly of the bankers that created this country’s deficit.

In the MOD, the payment of performance pay as a way of motivating and getting the best in support of the front line was created by attacking consolidated and pensionable pay.

20,000 civil service jobs have gone within the MOD since the Strategic Defence and Security announcement and defence capability is now worse than that of many developing countries. Morale in both the military and civilian side of the department is at an all time low.

The articles in the Daily Mail and Telegraph are disingenuous , they don’t tell the whole story.

Civil servants are not paid in line with the private sector, they are actually paid less in many instances and are undergoing a cut of up to 20% in their take home pay.

Minimum pay scales have had to be uplifted in the past to ensure they complied with the minimum wage.

The MOD has confirmed with great delight that it has closed its funding gap yet at Ministerial direction the department has been forced to rob their staff of performance pay that they had honestly earned.

The defence cuts cost capability, lives and livelihoods.

It is no wonder that in a recent survey of staff working in the MOD it was said:

“this government is destroying goodwill, capability and lives in defence. We need a safe set of hands that values the military and civilian components that underpin this country's defence capability”.

We want a Fair Deal in Defence that supports the frontline, Mr Hammond, the Secretary of State for Defence wants political point scoring.

Trade Unions - Representing working people

Seamus Milne in The Guardian on 12th September said:

"A generation after Thatcher's assault on the trade unions, they are still treated as dangerous or embarrassing outsiders. In reality, they are not only far and away the largest voluntary organisations in the country, but now the only major area of public life where working class people are properly represented. Their agenda on recovery, jobs, services, inequality, privatisation, public ownership and the democratisation of economic life is closer to where public opinion is than the major parties' front benches"