Civil servants vote for strike

Friday, 22 October 2004 12:00 AM

The head of the main civil service union, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), has confirmed that his members have voted for strike action.

PCS general secretary, Mark Serwotka, told a press conference that civil servants only strike as a "last resort" and he hoped that the "significance of this result dawns on the media and on the Government".

The union is angry at Government plans to slash 104,000 civil service jobs - as announced by Gordon Brown in this year's Budget - and relocate 20,000 more jobs out of London.

It is also angered by plans to raise the pension age to 65 and claims there is systematic low pay within the service.

Turn out in the ballot was around 42 per cent, 112,000 out of a total membership of 260,000, with 64.5 per cent (around 73,000) voting for strike action and 35.5 per cent (40,000) voting against.

The union's leadership feels that this gives it a strong enough mandate for action.

Announcing the results, Mr Serwotka stressed the work that civil servants do up and down the country, saying that: "Far from being back room bureaucrats . . . our members are pivotal to the society that we live in."

He accused the Government of engaging in an "attack without precedent" on his members, claiming that sick pay and conditions of service have all been targeted.

Mr Serwotka said that he hoped today's vote sent a message to the Government that "it is time to talk" and called for them to address his members' long standing concerns and recognise the "the critical role that civil servants play in public service delivery".

"Members have voted to take a stand for public services. It is a stand, which says they won't tolerate the Government's slash and burn approach to public services, services that everybody relies on from cradle to the grave. The people going on strike on 5th November aren't faceless bureaucrats, but people providing essential services that are consistently taken for granted. They are people who face massive uncertainty about their jobs and the prospect of having to work five more years to receive their pension. When the Government and Tories are engaged in a bidding war of who can cut the most, Britain's civil servants will be saying on the November 5th that you can't embark along the path of crude cuts without it damaging services.

"We welcome the fact that the Government is beginning to talk. However we still need to sit down and talk about how we can improve public services without the threat of compulsory redundancies, compulsory transfers and such arbitrary job cuts. It is time the Government realised that decent public services need people to deliver them and we urge them to think again."

Today's result represents the single biggest ballot for industrial action from the civil service, and if the one-day strike on November 5th goes ahead, it will be the first civil service strike in more than ten years.

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