Monday, February 16, 2004

I'M A CIVIL SERVANT, GET ME OUT OF HERE

So why aren't I on strike along with 80 (or 90) thousand civil servants on strike?

The story goes bak to the mid-1990s when Thatcher (bless her iron underpants) in her infinite wisdom devolved pay to departments and ministries. Until then, civil servants had national rates of pay, national terms and conditions ergo national strikes (er, so the old divide and conquer). Fast forward to 2003. Civil service pay years run to the ned of July. Each negotiating unit (and there are hundreds of them across the country) has a pay remit from the Treasury (so much for devolving pay).

Staff at the Department of Work and Pensions (aka the SS of the old DHSS, plus Job Centre staff from the old Department of Employment) and other pay units are ahead of other departments, like mine, in their pay battle. They have been negotiating for some time (although talks have now broken down). My lot have only been at it for a few months.

This year, I mean in 2003, the Treasury started to put the screws on. Most departments were given instructions to ratchet down pay deals to 2 or 3%. Across Whitehall and elsewhere (all those driving test centres for example) staff have been offered pretty low increases. And, unique in most industries, the headline pay increase figure is gross - i.e. the figure is supposed to cover uprating pay other than cost of living increases. That is to say, additional pay awards such as agreements to condense pay scales count against the overall settlement. Re-valorisation of pay is therefore decreased.

Staff in my department are faced with an award of about 2% - more than 1% below inflation. Fine if you are a middle or upper manager. But, it is a really crappy rise if you are at the bottom of the food chain. It's really crappy in the likes of DWP where "PCS estimates a quarter of staff ... earn less than ?13,750 and 81% are paid less than the UK average for non-manual workers of ?24,000."

Meanwhile, we have rejected the pay offer and a strike ballot looms in the next few weeks.

PCS General Secretary and awkward squad member, Mark Serwotka, has called the leaked Gershon report a kick in the teeth.

Gershon has been brought in from that ever efficient private sector (in his case arms dealers to despots around the world BAE Systems) to tell us how to save shed loads of money. Oh, and fuck staff in the process. Yes, the civil service and the public sectors can deliver better services and could cut costs. Yes, let's have some blue sky thinking too. But, some of the stuff reported in yesterday's FT sounds downright loopy to me.

:: Posted by pete @ 15:35