by René Lavanchy
THE Public and Commercial Services Union has pledged to work with other unions to deliver industrial action this autumn across the public sector after its civil service members voted for strike action last week.
If they are successful, unions could paralyse not only the central civil service – where the PCS is the largest union with over 200,000 members – but affect schools, hospitals, the prison service, jobcentres, Revenue and Customs and other key public services.
The National Union of Teachers will next week announce the result of their industrial action ballot, and Unite is currently balloting both its 100,000 members in the National Health Service and its prison service staff.
All could lead to industrial action next month against the Government’s two per cent pay policy.
PCS members voted to hold a one-day strike on 10 November, followed by a series of actions targeting different areas of the civil service. Other unions have the opportunity to timetable action to coincide with the targeted stoppages, and in a statement last week the union said it was working with the NUT, Unite and the TUC on the matter.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “There is a three-week opportunity to avoid damaging industrial action. The Government has the opportunity to recognise that its own workforce is doubly disadvantaged by a punitive pay system that sees coastguards receiving special pay rises because the minimum wage has gone up and nearly half of jobcentre workers receiving no pay rise whatsoever this year.”
The PCS complains that, since jobcentre workers’ pay rise this year has funded their normal progression up the pay scale, there has been no money left for a cost of living increase. The union is also unhappy with plans to close 200 jobcentres and axe 12,000 jobs in the Department for Work and Pensions.
One member of the NUT’s executive, who would have to consider any plan for co-ordinated action, told Tribune this week that they were willing and able to carry it out, because their strike ballot offers the option of discontinuous action, which is easier to co-ordinate. “We have made the appropriate preparation in my view”, he said.
He added that Mr Serwotka and NUT acting general secretary Christine Blower have been meeting on a regular basis. The PCS and NUT carried out joint strike action in April this year.
But a senior Unite source expressed uncertainty about their union’s preparedness to strike alongside the PCS and NUT. “They’re not the unions that Unite has traditionally worked most closely with. It’s a little more off the beaten track… but clearly we have been co-ordinating action with other unions.”
