Co-ordinated public sector strike action to intensify, union leader warns

Public and Commercial Services Union leader Mark Serwotka says industrial action will mount over coming months unless the government changes tack The leader of the largest civil service union has warned that co-ordinated strike action by public sector workers will intensify over the coming months as millions of staff face pay freezes, mass job losses and pension reforms branded as nothing short of “daylight robbery”. Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, issued the warning to the government ahead of his union’s strike ballot result, due on Wednesday, which is expected to result in civil servants joining teachers and lecturers for a walkout on 30 June bringing schools, colleges, universities, courts, ports and jobcentres to a standstill. The National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers announced their ballot result yesterday over proposed pension reforms that unions say will leave their members paying more, working longer and receiving less when they retire. Ministers say they are crucial to get public spending under control. Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, the biggest public sector union, signalled a further wave of unrest in the autumn by announcing on Monday that he was preparing to ballot 1.2 million state employees for sustained and co-ordinated strike action. Francis Maude, the minister for the Cabinet Office, who is steering government relations with the public sector unions, hit back by saying the government was keeping under review the possibility of making it harder for workers to go out on strike. “We have not ruled it out,” said Maude on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. Maude issued the warning as unions signalled plans for mass action in what would be the strongest industrial act of defiance yet against the government’s cuts programme. Serwotka said he believed co-ordinated action would mount over the coming months as the government showed no sign of having “second thoughts” over the pension proposals, which would leave members across the public sector significantly worse off. It made sense to make “common cause” with other unions whose members face the same threat to their pensions, he said. Speaking ahead of Maude, Serwotka told Today: “He knows as well as I do, because I’m in these talks, that what they’ve told us at every meeting that they will not compromise on putting up the pension age, they will not compromise on forcing us to pay three times the contribution and they will not compromise on people’s value of their pension being slashed. “So in reality the talks are a farce and he knows it, and therefore if you’re faced with mass job loss, with privatisation, with pay restraint and then the biggest slashing of your pensions there’s ever been, I don’t think it’s surprising that people want to defend themselves. It obviously makes sense that you make common cause with council workers, health workers and teachers because we all face the same attacks. Serwotka said the size of public sector pensions has been greatly exaggerated. “Many people therefore fall for the line of ‘the government and their gold-plated pensions’ and actually the average civil service pension is £4,000 a year,” he said. “It reflects the fact that most people are on extraordinarily low wages and even though we have a defined benefit pension scheme, it produces a very small amount of money at the end of it.” Maude denied that the talks were a “farce” and claimed public sector pensions represented an excellent deal, and would continue to do so when they had been reformed. As the country heads for the first wave of industrial unrest later this month, Maude warned striking teachers that they should be prepared for a public backlash. People would be “very angry” that a school “randomly closes down” when talks were still underway, he said. And he said turnout for the ballots suggested that the majority of NUT and ATL members were not in favour of strikes. “The idea that all these teachers are rising up in fury is rubbish,” he said. Asked if he supported calls made by Boris Johnson, the London mayor, and the Confederation of British Industry, to tighten strike laws by establishing a threshold turnout of between 40% and 50%, Maude said the government had not ruled this out. “There have been a lot of proposals made from outside about how strike laws might be reformed. It is notable that the teaching union ballots yesterday were on a very low turnout… There’s not a sense of the whole of the union membership rising up en masse. “We think the strike laws work pretty well at the moment. We certainly don’t rule anything out, but we’ve got no plans to make changes at the moment.” The CBI seized on planned strike action by tube unions to step up its call for changes to employment law so that more workers would have to take part in a ballot before a strike could be held. Talks will be held today to avert a walk-out by members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union over the sacking of a driver. Katja Hall, CBI chief policy director, said: “This strike is an attempt to cause maximum disruption for Londoners on a minimal turnout. “It can’t be right that just 29% of the balloted workforce voted in favour of this strike and that the tribunal case at the centre of this dispute has not even been decided. “Yet the travelling public now faces a difficult period trying to get in and around the capital. We are calling for the law to be changed so strikes can only go ahead with the backing of a significant proportion of the workforce.” Bob Crow hit back at the CBI, saying: “Who elects their members who have the power to ruin the lives of entire communities and plunge tens of thousands of vulnerable people into uncertainty at Southern Cross? There is no ballot threshold there and these greed merchants should keep their noses out of our business.” Trade unions Public sector cuts Public services policy Public finance Public sector pay Public sector pensions Local government Mark Serwotka Teaching Dave Prentis Bob Crow Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 15, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.