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TUC 2009 - Tuesday afternoon

15 September 2009

The Tuesday afternoon session opened with the presentation of TUC awards to union activists, including Helen Flanagan and Yvonne Washbourne from PCS.

After a short video was shown with interviews with the activists, prime minister Gordon Brown presented the award for youth to Helen and the women’s gold badge to Yvonne.

Introducing the winners, TUC president Sheila Bearcroft paid tribute to union activists who she described as “the bedrock of our movement”.

The prime minister described them as “heroes” and said: “I am proud to stand with them and thank them today.”

He then went on to address congress and the much-trailed threat of cuts in public spending were raised.

While talking in general terms about cutting costs and selling off “unproductive” assets, the only specific cut he referred to was to the civil service compensation scheme, even though the consultation period is still open.

He described the scheme as “early exit payments for Whitehall staff” and said the high costs stop the government giving other people jobs.

In the question and answer session later, PCS national president Janice Godrich reminded the prime minister that thousands of low-paid workers have accrued rights under the compensation scheme and asked that he take that into consideration.

Speaking afterwards, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said it was “desperately disappointing” that Mr Brown had targeted civil servants rather than tax exiles for savings, adding: “He wants to get rid of people on the cheap.”

Referring to Gordon Brown’s opposition to Tory plans to scrap national pay bargaining in some areas of the public sector, Janice highlighted the fact that this was scrapped in the civil service in 1994.

She asked him if he would give a similar commitment to restore national pay to the hundreds of thousands of government employees.

In response Mr Brown talked almost solely about the rate of inflation and interest rates, and only referred to national pay at the end by saying he will write to PCS about the issue.

Reforming the financial sector

In the following debate on economic and industrial affairs PCS deputy president Dave Bean spoke in support of composite nine about reforming the financial and banking systems.

Under this government there will be no restraint or punishment to prevent a repetition of the financial crisis, Dave said.

“There will be no cap on pay and bonuses, no pruning of banks deemed too big to fail, no measures to restrict the speed and scale of the financial sector. The banks have already decided that bonuses are back big time.

“This year the City of London will reward itself for the destruction of people’s lives with bonuses to the tune of £4 billion.”

He highlighted PCS’s tax justice campaign, which links the fight for a fair and effective tax system with the need to properly resource HM Revenue and Customs and stop the job cuts and office closure programme.

Dave pointed out that our campaign has included parliamentary work and a mass rally with speakers from PCS, the TUC and MPs, and said: “Part of our argument has been that when the economy has a shortfall of billions of pounds, and when just one HMRC employee brings in over £600,000 a year in tax revenue every year, it is nonsense to continue to close tax offices and cut jobs.”

He closed by saying: “Support this motion and demand government supports ordinary people who are suffering in this crisis and not the greedy fat cat bankers who caused it.”


 

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