BLN View
The HMRC pay offer is the most significant issue to hit the department since it was formed in 2005. The deal itself promises a pay rise which whilst better than normal offers, also strips away a myriad of T&Cs and protections which are massively beneficial to members. The BLN utterly condemns HMRC’s behaviour – members have faced a decade of unnecessary real-terms wage cuts and whilst departmental rhetoric suggests that this offer has been put together to address this, what it really represents is the department trying to capitalise on the desperate financial position that many members find themselves in by launching an assault on members’ T&Cs. The BLN reiterates its calls for fully funded pay rises which wipe out the pay deficit suffered by members over the last decade, without any detriment to T&Cs. We call on all members to unite and reject this attack.
The Deal
The deal itself covers a three year period from 2020/21 to 2022/23 and financially, offers an average 13% pay rise over that period. The pay award is weighted towards the lower paid grades, meaning clerical grades will benefit most – although it can’t be missed that many staff in these grades would have required minimum uplifts to keep them in line with National Minimum Wage legislation over this period, irrespective of the pay award.
Were there no strings attached, the pay offer (whilst it may not meet the National Pay Claim), doubtless represent progress. Additionally, the introduction of home working policies, contractual flexi & reduced time to accrue annual leave will also be welcome to most members. What will be less welcome however is…
- The removal of the MIS Agreement – an agreement which was won as a result of a successful industrial action ballot and ensures protections against management harassment for front-facing staff
- The removal of one hour’s Reasonable Daily Travel – this protection exists specifically to ensure that when an office closes, staff cannot be forcibly redeployed to a new office if it takes more than an hour to travel to that new office – loss of this is particularly dangerous during the department’s UK-wide office closure programme
- Mandatory Unpaid Overtime – an aspect of current contracts which will not change is the ability of the department to compel staff to work overtime – however it is rarely invoked due to being prohibitively expensive. The removal of paid overtime makes it significantly easier for the department to force staff to work regular mandatory overtime
- Alternative Working Patterns (AWPs) – all staff on AWPs will have to reapply every five years – many staff have held these working patterns for decades and will now potentially find themselves being forced to work full-time hours, including evenings & weekends
- The end of traditional (trad) contracts – these members are doubtless worse affected than any other group, particularly in front-line services. Again, these staff will suddenly lose aforementioned protections meaning it will no longer be prohibitively expensive for them to be compelled to work overtime, alongside suddenly losing all control they have over their working patterns and being forced onto standard rotations
- Working week – the working week for staff in London will increase from 36 to 37 hours per week, which has a particular impact when considering the difficulties in travelling across London and other areas. Whilst this represents an increase of one hour working time, the increased travel time will be significantly higher for many London-based staff and seriously affect their work-life balance
- Annual Leave – despite the increased accrual rate described above, members in Scotland previously had two bank holidays converted to annual leave, giving a maximum of 32 days’ leave a year. With a departmental-wide cap of 30 days, those members in Scotland will lose two days’ annual leave
- Protections – it is clear that many members with caring responsibilities and with protected characteristics will suffer most from these changes. An obvious example is how carers & parents will face major problems trying to balance their working life around their other obligations, given the lack of any specific notice periods and protections against shift changes & mandatory overtime. It is quite likely that this deal actually falls foul of indirect discrimination legislation and carriage of the deal would put PCS in the ridiculous position of having to take legal action against a deal that it recommended to members.
Customer Services Group (CSG)
The worst-hit members are clearly those who work in the department’s front-facing CSG. If we ask why (at a time where front-line services are so heavily understaffed to the extent that staff are continually redeployed from one helpline to the next in a desperate bid to meet demand) the CSG wants to stop traditional staff having control over their working patterns and force them onto evening & weekend working, to remove an agreement which stops telephony staff from being harassed, to introduce mandatory unpaid overtime and to remove minimum notice periods for working pattern changes – it is clear that despite PCS’ long-standing demand for HMRC to be fully staffed, the CSG’s approach is to squeeze every last drop out of their hard-pressed staff. There is no question that should these changes go through, they amount to CSG members becoming second-class citizens.
National Campaign
After the deal ends, there is no guarantee that the dept won’t again impose real-terms pay cuts, whilst the T&Cs lost can only be won back through a concerted & sustained industrial campaign. Members have been put in an extremely difficult position whereby they have to consider if they can personally afford to withstand the assault against their T&Cs by rejecting this deal – the BLN is here to support you in any way we can.
The R&C GEC was split down the middle over the question of whether or not to recommend this deal to members, with 14 GEC members voting in favour and 11 voting against. We believe that many GEC members made decisions in good faith, however it is also clear that the earlier GEC decision to hold “in confidence” talks with the employer was a strategic mistake, with important detriments not coming to light until the morning that the GEC was required to make a decision. What is also clear is that this ambiguity has allowed the SV’s GEC Caucus to pursue an agenda of pushing this deal through at any cost – with members now being asked to vote on an offer which at the time of writing, still hasn’t been fully communicated to them. Members must know what they’re being asked to vote on and with the ballot due to commence on 8th February, the full collective agreement needs to be published to members now. PCS should be arranging full members meetings where all information is available and in effect, should be holding a full membership consultation over this issue. Any ballot put to members whereby they are unable to fully scrutinise the deal they’re being offered is nothing more than a sham – and in the long term will be severely damaging to PCS.
Whilst it is appalling that the department would not use the money already present in their coffers to level up T&Cs and pay so their hard-working staff can enjoy a decent living wage, much of the blame for this mess also has to be attributed to the SV leadership within PCS, who have failed miserably to mount a proper National Pay Campaign. Given that in the last two years, the National Pay Campaign has amounted to nothing more than a parliamentary petition & failed industrial action ballot, it is clear that the SV’s national leadership (including their representatives on the R&C GEC) has been keen for this deal to go through as it will allow them climb down from the position they put to ADC 2019 – namely that the only way to progress the national campaign was via an aggregated Civil Service-wide ballot. Specifically, readers will recall that the SV desperately avoided any attempt to have a genuine debate about the best way forward and instead engaged in puerile ad hominem attacks against anyone who advocated a position contrary to theirs, claiming that those who spoke in favour of disaggregation were simply trying to score political points and in doing so were undermining the union.
It should be pointed out that had ADC 2019 voted for disaggregation, the R&C Group (along with a number of other groups which successfully beat the ballot threshold), would have taken industrial action over pay two years ago and in doing so, would have been able to deliver a much better deal for its members than what is currently on offer. However unlike the SV, who are now so scared of conference exercising its sovereignty that its NEC members (which includes members of the R&C GEC) have scrapped the union’s constitution, the BLN fully supports the sovereignty of conference and accepted the outcome of the 2019 pay motions. Even given the limitations within the motions which were carried, the SV’s NEC caucus has still managed to do a spectacularly bad job of leading the union’s pay campaign. The SV recognises this and has calculated that it’s best way out of the situation is to use the HMRC pay deal to push for a series of departmental deals which offset pay versus T&Cs – and claim this as a resounding victory. We have already seen a great deal of opposition to this deal from many members in HMRC (particularly from those members on trad contracts) and whilst it is too early to say which way the ballot will go, it is clear that PCS stands to lose a hell of a lot of long-serving members – we cannot let this be repeated in group after group.
BLN has consistently argued for a national pay campaign that actually listens to what members and grass roots activists want, building from the ground up rather than dictating to them from an office in Clapham. The SV has shown time and again that they are unfit to lead this union and their current position on how to take the national pay campaign forward is actively dangerous. Come the NEC elections, it is abundantly clear that the leadership needs to be replaced. The BLN urges R&C members to oppose this divisive pay offer and urges all PCS members to support BLN candidates in the forthcoming NEC elections.
PCS Broad Left Network 