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Shared services

The Department for Transport (DfT board), chaired by the Secretary of State Philip Hammond decided on 9 December that Shared Services is to be privatised. The Shared Service Centre (SSC) was created in January 2006 to provide HR, payroll and finance services to organisations within the DfT. The SSC is based in Swansea.

This comes as bleak news for approximately 260 staff working at the SSC. Many of them transferred to the SSC in the belief that it would help to secure their jobs for the foreseeable future. Now, after working hard to make the SSC succeed as a service provider for DfT, they are to be pushed out of the civil service into the private sector. As one PCS member said at a mass meeting in the workplace, “If I had wanted to work in the private sector, I wouldn’t have applied to join the civil service 30 years ago.”

The main reason for this decision is to assist the Department to reduce administrative costs as part of the Government’s program of cuts. It is also consistent with the Government’s declared aim of reducing the size of the public sector.

PCS has consistently opposed the cuts. The budget deficit was not of our making. It was caused by the crisis in the banking sector, yet the leading financiers still benefit from massive annual bonuses that it would take an ordinary civil servant a life - time to earn.

Privatisation would remove the SSC from the democratic accountability of the public sector and leave the service and the staff who provide it subject to the vagaries of market forces and the profit motive alone.

We have an assurance from DfT that “a substantial portion” of the work would remain in Swansea for the duration of the contract with the private buyer and staff would have some protection in the short term through the TUPE Regulations. However, there are no long - term guarantees regarding their jobs, pay, terms and conditions and trade union rights under a new employer.

PCS argued for the SSC to remain as part of the DfT to build on the good work that staff have contributed over the past 5 years. We will work hard to secure the best possible transfer terms for members in addition to those under the TUPE Regulations if the privatisation goes ahead. However, we do not accept the decision to privatise and will continue to campaign to reverse the decision.