Hundreds of thousands of teachers, lecturers, civil servants and local government workers have registered their anger and support for strike action as the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) prepared to align itself to joint action with Unite, Unison, the Prison Officers Association, teacher’s unions and the Fire Brigades Union.
At least 60,000 public sector jobs face the axe in the coming months. The biggest cuts will be at the Ministry of Defence where 25,000 staff are to go, many in Whitehall and at regional offices, including organisations that supply troops in action.
The Department of Work and Pensions, which is issuing its plans in dribs and drabs, has 2,400 jobs going at Jobcentre Plus with
17 benefit processing and call centres from Arbroath to Exeter set to close; 5,000 out of 13,000 staff in charge of pensions, disabled benefits and jobseekers allowance in offices in Leeds, Sheffield and London as part of a rationalization of the benefit system. Even 600 staff employed by Working Links, on a contracted out work programme run by the department, will be sacked before it is properly launched.
The Home Office has earmarked 8,500 jobs to go – 5,000 in the Borders agency, including 776 out of 1,453 staff handling asylum caseloads.
Some 400 diplomatic jobs go at the Foreign Office with inexperienced cheap rate local staff replacing them at embassies abroad; 200 at the Health and Safety Executive; 250 through the closure of the Newport passport office; 700 following closure of magistrates courts as part of a 7,500 staff cut at the Ministry of Justice; and an unknown number to come from further closures of land registry offices, other passport offices, tax offices, and the closure of most coastguard stations.
Some organizations are being reduced to a bare minimum such as the Commission for Rural Communities, which champions internet broadband for villages and sustainable development, and is suffering a 93.5 per cent cut to its budget this year
which will see staff cut from 85 to just three.
Others, such as the Office of the Public Guardian, which looks after the financial affairs of the mentally ill, is moving from London to Birmingham and sacking anyone who will not go.
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS, said: “Everything we have ever worked for is under threat from this Government. The services we provide and the jobs we do are under threat. The Government’s strategy on pay makes no economic sense.
“The scale and injustice of these attacks, announced by the Government without consultation and sometimes simply imposed, means our national executive committee is unanimously recommending a ballot for strike action.”
