General secretary responds to Daily Mail
31 July 2009
Your report about proposed changes to the civil service compensation scheme - Blitz on the £1bn golden goodbyes for civil servants - is based on a grain of truth, a great deal of speculation and a dose of prejudice.
The fact is that civil service management have put forward proposals that slash workers existing legal and contractual rights to fair compensation if made redundant.
It is interesting that these existing terms were introduced by the Treasury in 1987 and endorsed by the then government led by Margaret Thatcher. If it was fair then why is it not fair now for civil servants who for years have suffered low pay and low increases on the basis that they have secure jobs?
It is also the case that almost 100,000 civil service jobs have been cut in the past four years. The vast majority of those jobs have been among low paid civil servants providing essential services in every community.
The stereotype of mandarins with gold-plated pensions is far from the truth. Almost 20% of civil servants earn less £15,000 a year and the average civil service pension is £6,500. When you exclude high earners, the average is £4,200. Hardly gold plated.
My union will be opposing these proposals announced today because they rob many of our members of tens of thousands of pounds should they lose their jobs. That is why our members belong to PCS to fight to defend their jobs and their employment conditions. We have made proposals to show how savings can be made without attacking our members’ rights.
Mark Serwotka
General secretary
Public and Commercial Services union
Top Ten Articles
- Gallery demo in Trafalgar Square
- Young members meet in Manchester
- PCS news digest 3 February
- MPs to be briefed about DVLA cuts
- Three strikes and they're out at tourist attraction
- Write to your MP about welfare today
- Submit motions for conference electronically today
- By mutual consent? Nothing like it
- One day to defend the welfare state
- Urgent action needed to save welfare
Tab Comment
- View comments
- Add a new comment
Tab Comment content
Tab Bottom
- Directory
- Contact Us
- Search
Tab Bottom content
-
CampaignsEqualityNews and eventsResources
3 August 2009
Although the Daily Mail have the right to print whatever mis-information and propoganda they want, we as individuals have the right to spend our hard earned cash on whichever news outlet we choose. It seems to me that the Daily Mail are taking something of an economic gamble on alienating half a million people in the UK. Let's not expect them to do the decent thing and print the truth, it doesn't sell newspapers, why don't we just ask all members to boycott the paper. A boycott by Civil Servants might seem a minor thing but it's not, just look at how many papers the Sun has sold in Liverpool since their Hillsborough lies twenty years ago. The Daily Mail can only get away with their bile if people are willing to pay for it, there are still half a million of us, let's start using our buying power to influence their policy.
Karl Henry