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Campaigns

PCS has a well earned reputation for being a vibrant and active campaigning union.

By standing together and fighting for what we believe in we have shown we can make a difference.

Our members decide what is important and our campaigns are conceived, developed and led by them.

We are currently engaged in a national campaign in the civil service and its related agencies for fair pay, jobs and working conditions. This has had a major impact and has helped secure an agreement with the government on protection from compulsory redundancy.

Pensions outcome

For up to date information on the pensions talks outcome, following Danny Alexander’s statement in the House of Commons yesterday (20.12.12), visit the PCS pension update page.

You will find there the latest on the N30 unions’ positions and PCS’s response to the Heads of Agreement offered by government on civil service pensions.

The press conference held by Danny Alexander and Francis Maude at HM Treasury, after the statement, was a telling indictment of the approach the coalition has taken to pension negotiations. 

Eric Pickles’s blunder was sufficiently opportune as questions could be asked of Alexander and Maude immediately and it highlighted the untrustworthiness of those negotiating on the government’s behalf.

Maude persists in disingenuously stating that Mark Serwotka had refused to participate in the pension talks. Our general secretary has attended all meetings that general secretaries were invited to (the last being 2 November), but those meetings that focussed on the fine detail of government proposals were attended by PCS’s key national negotiators, skilled and with long experience. 

The prime minister would not participate in actual detailed discussions, but leaves that to his ministers and civil servants, who have the necessary expertise.  PCS has not dignified Maude’s absurd and misleading claim with a response, but it has angered PCS members, much as the government’s continuing emphasis that these pension changes are necessary even though experts and PCS have proved beyond doubt that they are not and that there are viable alternatives.

Outsourcing

Danny Alexander’s nod to ensuring Fair Pensions for those TUPE-ed out of the public sector (cynically claiming he was doing what the unions want) confirms what PCS has been saying about the real agenda driving public sector pension changes (and included in the terms of reference for Lord Hutton’s pensions review) as being the privatisation of public sector work:

“The new pensions will be substantially more affordable to alternative providers...  At the same time by offering transferred staff the right to remain members of the public sector scheme, we are no longer requiring private, voluntary and social enterprise providers to take on the risks of defined benefit that deter many from bidding for contracts in the first place.”

HMRC sweetheart relationship with large coporations

The HMRC debacle was appropriately summed up in a BBC interview by Lord Oakeshott, who highlighted the lack of resources within the department due to job cuts and lack of investment, and described the hardworking staff there as “lions led by donkeys”.

Voice of our members

Mark Baker, SW Regional Committee Chair, was contacted by a member yesterday who said: “Thanks for your updates and continuing support and leadership.  My wife is a community specialist nurse and we cannot afford over a 6% loss in wages. She has had no pay rise or any one off payments. I earn £23,000 and my wife £21,000.  We don’t know if we will have to cancel our pensions as we cannot afford the rise in contributions.  Looking for the continuing support given to us by PCS.

“I am at my wits end.  I have 2 children and just don’t know what is going to happen.  I fixed my mortgage for 5 years, as I always plan for the future, but it just seems the goal posts can be moved whenever and however the government wants.  I would like to know how much the average MP will be paying into their pension now and how much after – does this affect them at all?”

All of us in the PCS SW regional office have greatly valued your support and commitment throughout 2010 and would like to wish you all a happy festive holiday and the hope that 2012, although inevitably demanding, will be good to you all.  As the core of PCS you who are members and reps have led the way, innovationally and bravely, for others to follow.

Strike for the alternative - N30

PCS members took a stand against the unprecedented attacks on workers by the Conservative-led government by striking on November 30, specifically on the issue of pensions. Marches and rallies supporting the action took place on N30 across the country (view the images on Flickr) and in the South West region the attendance was excellent:

Our campaign recognises that everything we have worked for is under threat:

  • Pay is frozen while inflation soars
  • People face working longer and paying more for smaller pensions.
  • No public sector job is safe as services are slashed and organisations merge
  • The government has ripped up the redundancy terms in the civil service compensation scheme (CSCS).

Other campaigns we support cover a wide range of issues from the workplace to the wider world.

In the region we are also actively involved with the following campaigns:

If you would like to find out more about any of our campaigns or if you would like to get involved please contact us at the PCS regional office.