16 February 2007
Whitehall's largest trade union is threatening to hijack the local elections in May by exposing candidates supporting the government's controversial civil service reform agenda.
The Public and Commercial Services union, which represents 320,000 public servants, aims to swing marginal council votes by encouraging its members to support candidates who oppose planned government job cuts, privatisations and pay caps.
General secretary Mark Serwotka said it was 'feasible' that the campaign could swing votes in Scotland and Wales, where many of the 104,000 job cuts planned by 2008 have taken place.
'The Scottish and Welsh elections are delicately poised – this campaign could rattle a few cages,' Serwotka said. All local council seats in Wales and Scotland will be contested in May, while a third of England's wards will be up for grabs.
The PCS's election strategy forms part of a wider industrial action campaign, which began with a strike by up to 150,000 civil servants last month.
A second national walk-out is likely, Serwotka confirmed, while a two-week overtime 'ban' ended this week and other work-to-rule practices will follow. Strikes at individual departments, including Revenue and Customs and the Ministry of Defence, are planned and legal challenges to equal pay settlements could be launched.
Serwotka called on ministers to re-engage in 'meaningful' talks to reach a solution to staff opposition. He argued that while discussions have continued across Whitehall, 'the government continues to look at issues such as pay and job cuts in isolation – and not as a package to be dealt with as a whole.'
But Cabinet Office sources countered that all departments were briefed on the wider context that feeds into individual departmental discussions.
The politically unaffiliated PCS has set aside £500,000 for its local government election campaign, dubbed 'Make your vote count'. It will write to candidates and MPs asking for their views on aspects of the reform agenda. Serwotka will publish responses and distribute them to local PCS members, encouraging them to vote for candidates who support local jobs and improved pay deals.
Some civil servants will receive effective pay cuts this year, because Chancellor Gordon Brown has capped rises at his target consumer prices index inflation rate of 2%, while actual inflation is 2.7%.
Meanwhile, Serwotka said that the two-week overtime ban that followed the national strike had 'claimed its first victim'. The Department for Constitutional Affairs confirmed this week that it had postponed its Operation Payback programme, an annual blitz to increase court fine collection rates through extra resources, including additional staff.
The crackdown, which gleaned £2.5m in fines last year, was due to start on January 29 but has been delayed indefinitely.
A DCA spokesman denied that the postponement was due to the work to rule. 'It was delayed for operational purposes,' he claimed, citing budget constraints as a contributing factor.
The government's tactic of waiting for the PCS's campaign to fizzle out suffered a further blow when a second civil service union, Prospect, joined Whitehall's dissenting voices.
The union, which represents government scientists and engineers, warned that ministers were using 'crude' measures to curb pay and jobs and 'are about to provoke industrial conflict and an exodus of staff from frontline services'. Prospect is unhappy that equal pay claims must be funded from within the Treasury's pay cap in the same way as annual rises.
Prospect members at eight departments, including the Ministry of Defence, are considering industrial action. Two, including the Forensic Science Service, opposed potential privatisations.
Dai Hudd, assistant general secretary, said that enforcement of the 2% pay ceiling when private sector pay deals have reached 4% – 'would be the last straw for many [Whitehall] professionals.'
PFfeb2007
