PCS members vote to join 30 June walkout and more unions likely to follow as backlash against spending cuts grows
The biggest backlash against the coalition's deficit reduction plan has begun in earnest with a union representing a quarter of a million civil servants voting to join striking teachers for a walkout on 30 June that will close schools, colleges, universities, courts, ports and jobcentres.
As many as 750,000 state employees could walk out in the first national coordinated industrial action against the government's pension reforms, with every other major public sector union signalling they will join sustained rolling strike action from the autumn across schools, councils, the NHS and Whitehall should crucial talks with the government fail.
Several sources close to the talks said they had all but ground to a halt with ministers and union bosses unable to agree even basic principles.
Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the treasury, is expected to give an indication of the government's latest position in a speech on Friday.
The ballot of the Public and Commercial Services union, which has 250,000 civil service members, was 61.1% in favour of strikes, and 83.6% supporting other forms of industrial action, on a turnout of 32.4%. They join 500,000 teachers and academics in the National Union of Teachers, Association of Teachers and Lecturers and the Universities and College Union preparing to strike on 30 June. The Prison Officers Association – whose members are barred by law from striking – said later that their members would hold protest meetings on the same day.
The National Association of Head Teachers is balloting this week on strike action and the Association of School and College Leaders are polling members to see if they are in favour of their first ever ballot for strike action. Unison – which has 1.4 million public sector members – GMB and Unite have all indicated they will move to ballot if pensions talks fail this summer and are likely to spark rolling action across the public sector from the autumn.
Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the PCS, said: "This result shows that public servants, who provide vital services from the cradle to the grave, will not stand back while everything they have ever worked for is taken from them.
"The government admits that money cut from pensions will go straight to the Treasury to help pay off the deficit in what is nothing more than a tax on working in the public sector. The very modest pay and pensions of public servants did not cause the recession, so they should not be blamed or punished for it.
"Unless ministers abandon their ideological plans to hollow out the public sector, they will face industrial action on a mass scale on 30 June and beyond."
Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister responsible for leading negotiations with the unions, accused the PCS of having a weak mandate with a turnout of 32%. "This is not surprising given that talks with the TUC about public sector pensions are continuing. There is no justification for any civil servant going on strikes while discussions are continuing.
"Public sector pensions will remain among the very best, providing a guaranteed pension level for all employees. Today very few private sector employers still offer guaranteed pension levels … we continue to hope that industrial action will not take place, but in the unfortunate event that it does we can assure the public now that all services have highly developed and rigorous contingency plans."
Serwotka claimed that the ballot procedures were so draconian that they prohibited stronger turnouts.
Maude and the chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, are meeting fortnightly with the unions to negotiate a deal on pensions. The plans are based on recommendations made by the former Labour work and pensions secretary Lord Hutton, whom the government commissioned to conduct a review earlier this year.
But those talks are said to have stalled, with ministers refusing to revisit fundamental decisions to increase employee contributions and change the method of calculating pensions from CPI to the lower RPI. The starting offer in the government's negotiations, made privately to unions but leaked to the Guardian earlier this month, showed they were poised to adopt nearly all of Lord Hutton's proposals. But they also signalled their intention to go even further, changing the rate of accruals so that the proportion of the average salary accrued for each year worked is reduced.
Unions sources close to the talks privately described the talks as stuck and Serwotka called them a farce while the government admitted they were difficult. The prime minister's official spokesman said they were engaged in "an open and constructive dialogue".
Separately, the RMT union confirmed plans for a series of strikes of London underground workers starting on Sunday and on through this month.
Pensions are the only issue the unions can jointly strike on, as they affect all of their members and form a legal basis for an industrial dispute. But there is also widespread union opposition to job cuts, the pay freeze and the government's public sector reforms.
Official public sector employment figures published on Wednesday showed a marked drop of 24,000 people employed by the state in the first three months of this year compared with the previous quarter.
But statisticians said the real figure is closer to 39,000, once 14,500 people brought in temporarily to conduct this year's census are factored out. It means that there are 143,000 fewer public sector workers compared with when the coalition began.
Half of the 24,000 reduction at the beginning of this year was education, as schools and colleges shed staff at the rate of 1,000 a week. An analysis by the Institute for Government revealed that in Whitehall alone there has been a reduction of 4.2% in the past year – the fastest ever rate at which the centre of government has shrunk. By comparison Margaret Thatcher set a target of reducing the civil service by 10% over four years.
Rival views
The government's case
The new pension plan was drawn up by Lord Hutton, the former Labour work and pensions secretary. Details are still to be confirmed but it will include raising the retirement age for most employees to 66, increasing contributions by an average of 3.2 percentage points and moving towards a career average scheme to replace more generous final salary schemes.
Ministers argue that the retirement age will be fairer as people live longer, that savings have to be made to help reduce the deficit and that it is unfair to ask taxpayers to pay for pensions that are more generous than most private sector schemes. The cost of paying for teachers' pensions alone is forecast to rise from about £5bn in 2005 to almost £10bn by 2015. Ministers say public sector pensions will still be better than the vast majority in the private sector.
The unions' case
Union bosses argue their members are being asked to pay more to receive less when they retire later.
They say their more generous schemes were introduced to compensate for low wages and that ministers should not use the poor pensions in the private sector as an excuse for a "race to the bottom". They stress that most state employees are not "fat cats" – the mean average public sector pension is £7,000.
Unions argue that some people in physical jobs, such as nursing, will struggle in their 60s.
The lowest paid workers will be protected causing some in higher-paid parts of the public sector to fear that their contributions could increase much more. Ministers have said this is non-negotiable in order to raise £2bn a year. Unions say this simply amounts to an additional tax on public sector workers and cite a National Audit Office report which suggests the current pension schemes are affordable.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/15/pcs-civil-servants-vote-strike-spending-cuts
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