Socialist Appeal - Appalling Attacks on the Civil Service Compensation Scheme

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Appalling Attacks on the Civil Service Compensation Scheme

By Rachel Heemskerk, Regional Secretary DWP PCS East of England (personal capacity)

Friday, 14 August 2009

In 1987 the Government and civil service unions agreed a compensation scheme which set out the exit terms provided to civil servants whose contracts are terminated by their Department. But, over 20 years on, the Prime Minister announced in March this year his intention to fundamentally ‘reform’ these severance schemes to reduce the cost to the tax payer. The government see the present terms as ‘inflexible and expensive.’
Is this because during the last 3 years over 70,000 civil servants have been made redundant at a cost of over £1.4 billion pounds? Remember this is just the tip of an iceberg with the government still planning to reduce the civil service staffing levels by a further 100,000!!

Under the new proposals there will be a standard approach across all civil service departments. There will be no provision for early retirement and no access to a pension before 60 years of age. In fact those who agree to take a voluntary package over 60 will be paid less in the termination payment, to take into account the fact that the pension is funded by the tax payer.

The payments in the new scheme are linked to the length of service but will only pay up to a maximum of 2 years salary, which will penalise anyone with over14 ½ years service, which is not uncommon in the civil service. This would represent a huge financial loss amounting to tens of thousands of pounds each for the vast majority of existing staff, particularly those facing redundancy, whether that be compulsory or voluntary.

The proposals are an outrageous attempt to cut people’s jobs on the cheap when many are worried about job security.

They amount to a cut in accrued and contractual rights to decent redundancy compensation at a time when we can clearly see that tens of thousands of jobs are at risk over the next few years.

This is a further attack on a civil service workforce which have seen a series of derisory pay offers over the last few years meaning many have continuously had below inflation payments. It is time that we fought back and said enough is enough! The Public and Commercial Service Union (PCS) and other civil service unions should stand together and ballot members on strike action across the whole service. No one department should be left to fight this appalling attack on the civil service workforce, it is important we stand together.

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