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Picket lines were formed once more outside
government offices on the day Mr. Darling announced the Budget. The PCS union
on the 8th and 9th of March called strikes, and again, on
the day of the Budget came out in protest against the attacks on their pensions
and job security. The government is proposing alterations to the Civil Service
compensation scheme. In essence this will mean thousands cut from each worker’s
pension and also a reduction in redundancy compensation would mean it would be
cheaper to sack workers. One can see with out much scrutiny that this is a
manoeuvre to facilitate massive job cuts in the not so distant future.
We attended a picket line outside the HMRC
and DWP offices in Stratford to offer our solidarity and to assess the mood of
the workers. There was indeed a militant mood among the picketing workers, who
were quite rightly outraged and rather appalled at the way they had been
treated. Kelly, a DWP worker who had recently joined PCS, commented that the
DWP employees are among the lowest paid in the Civil Service. Sue Catten, the
DWP East London echoed this point; “60 percent of people earn less than
£25,000. We have coast guards who earn £12,000 a year. It is complete nonsense
that people are earning huge salaries, it’s not true at all”.
Workers
can see the implications of these manoeuvres. Sue Catten goes on to say; “I
think the aim of all this is that they are looking to make huge job cuts after
the election, who ever gets into power”. People know that their conditions and
jobs are at risk, and they are now demonstrating that they will no longer take
these attacks lying down. The recent strikes have shown that workers are ready
and willing to fight. As Kelly at Stratford put it; “we are fighting for what
we are entitled to”.
Unfortunately, it seemed there were a few
workers who were not in the union and did not fully understand the reasons for
the strike and turned up for work. The DWP representative Sue Catten managed to
explain why they were striking and convinced most of these workers to join the
strike. She also gave out application forms to join PCS.
Kelly noted that younger
workers have a longer time to pay into a pensions fund and, therefore, they
would want to make sure their pensions are secure. The capitalist system has
shown its incapability of providing this security for the vast majority of
society.
We support the PCS workers, who are rightly
fighting to defend their jobs and conditions. Not just for the present, but
also for the future of the Civil Service. Workers like Sue and Kelly have shown
they will not allow those who want to devastate our services to succeed. We
demand that PCS does not relent and continues this struggle. Also, other
sectors should recognise that the attack on the Civil Service workers is part
of a wider assault on the working class. The capitalist class along with its
representatives in parliament want to make the workers pay for the crisis. All
sectors facing cuts should unite, because the source of our strength is our
unity.
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