05 September 2008
Representatives of millions of public sector workers will discuss co-ordinating strike action against the government's attempts to cap pay rises at next week's Trades Union Congress conference.
The congress will open with a debate on public sector pay on September 8, with motions from several unions under discussion.
Resolutions tabled by the PCS and the National Union of Teachers urge co-ordinated industrial action, with calls for the TUC to organise 'a major national demonstration against the government's pay policy before the end of this year'.
A PCS spokesman said: 'We would hope we'd get a very strong message coming out of congress, saying the unions will work together and up the campaigning over pay.'
The PCS national executive was set to finalise plans to ballot its 280,000-strong civil service membership for national industrial action this week. The NUT is expected to discuss its own balloting arrangements shortly.
But the threat of further strikes by council workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland this autumn has receded after unions and employers issued a joint statement setting out a lengthy timescale for talks.
Town hall unions staged a two-day strike in July against a 2.45% pay offer. But the joint statement, issued on September 1, said both sides aimed 'to resolve as soon as possible the current dispute over pay for 2008/09'.
Negotiators will also review conditions of service to produce a new national agreement by December. 'The two sides will work together to identify ways of using general efficiency savings to improve the pay and conditions of the local government workforce,' the statement said.
Meanwhile, representatives of senior civil servants in the FDA and Prospect unions delivered a report to Chief Secretary to the Treasury Yvette Cooper this week, warning that Whitehall staff will suffer more than other public sector workers under the pay restraint policy.
The report, commissioned from analysts Income Data Services, noted that in the civil service, the cost of progression increments is included in the overall value of pay awards, reducing the rises that staff receive. Those at the top of their pay grades have had no consolidated increase for years.
Dave Penman, head of operations at the FDA, said: 'The approach to pay in the civil service has left a workforce demoralised and facing significantly lower pay increases than the rest of the public sector.'
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