Month: Jul 2025

Below-inflation Scottish Government pay award rejected – members prepare for battle

The Scottish Government (SG) have now published their pay offer. Scottish Government announced their Public Sector Pay Policy (“the pay policy”) 7 months ago in December 2024, and is the equivalent of the UK Government pay remit guidance. Scottish pay policy covers PCS members working in the Scottish Government and Scottish Devolved Sector Groups, as well as other Scottish public servants in other unions. All unions, including PCS, rejected the pay policy immediately.

The offer is a three-year deal of 9% over those three years – 3.75% in 2025/26, 3.25% in 2026/27, and 2% in 2027/26. The GEC has unanimously rejected this offer.

This offer, which does nothing to address crippling low pay across Scottish Government, is no higher than the original pay policy. All they have done is move from spreading it equally to front loading it in years 1 and 2. This is despite talks with PCS, ongoing since April 2025.

The Office for National Statistics puts CPIH inflation (including housing costs) at 4.1% for June 2025, and RPI at 4.4% – and it is steadily rising. A pay offer of  3.75%, for year 1 is therefore already well below inflation and does nothing to restore the value of SG wages lost since 2008. In fact, it makes it worse.

The offer means that all staff not yet on the grade maxima (around 42% of SG staff) will go up a further step. Whilst this would give large increases for those staff in the short term, PCS argues the max is the rate for the job – anyone still on a progression journey is, by definition, currently underpaid for their role. The nearly 60% of staff already at the max (and those reaching it shortly) will return to real-terms pay cuts almost immediately unless we win at least inflation-proofed pay awards.

Disgracefully, the offer  requires PCS to sign up to job cuts and trade pay for jobs. PCS does not and will not acknowledge that pay is funded from restructures, “productivity” measures, and a drop in the delivery of public services. Once again, SG and Scottish Ministers seek to lay the blame for lack of investment in public services at the feet of the ordinary worker, rather than their own austerity measures and cuts budgets.

What’s not  in the offer

The offer does not:

  • Meet our demand for an above-inflation pay rise and steps towards pay restoration.
  • Include a break clause to enable us to reopen negotiations, e.g. if there are inflation spikes. While these clauses are never a guarantee, the lack of one shows bad faith and a total disregard for our members.
  • Protect jobs. In fact it has significantly diluted the no compulsory redundancy guarantee that has been in place in SG Main for 17 years.
    • Recent experience of the concrete reality of the Ministerial statement is apparent, having already betrayed Scottish Sector members and approved compulsory redundancies in Visit Scotland ( a non-departmental public body subject to the same pay policy.)
    • These cuts have come after voluntary exits and redeployment efforts failing to slash enough jobs for their CEO’s liking. There is no reason to believe therefore that SG won’t be treated in the same manner, including agencies and NDPBs whose budgets are already straining after cuts.
  • Include any mention of a shorter working week with no loss of pay
  • Include any improvements to leave entitlement (annual or parental)

What’s next?

The SG Group Executive Committee (GEC) met on 16 July and unanimously voted to reject the offer and move to a campaign and ballot of PCS members to leverage pressure on an intransigent employer.

Less than an hour after this decision was made the GEC was told that the National Disputes Committee (NDC) Secretary insisted we deliver a consultative ballot first. Given the Left Unity majority on the NDC, while the GEC have agreed to complain and demand we receive permission to enter dispute, we are now building the campaign necessary, including a consultative ballot to leverage the employer.

Subsequently, when challenged at the NEC on 23-24 July and in writing, the NDC secretary confirmed that he had not had a formal request about SG pay nor was he making a formal recommendation. Unfortunately this was not how it was presented to the GEC and could have cost valuable time.

SG members are primed for a fight on pay, having waited 7 months for a below inflation, paltry pay offer. This is simply not acceptable. Members meetings tell us that pay is a huge issue and low pay in particular. Pay is consistently linked with hybrid working and a key reason why members oppose enforced office attendance.

BLN members in SG have full confidence that our members will vote yes in a ballot and therefore it is crucial we act quickly to put everything in place. Given the lack of movement from Scottish Government we have no choice but to escalate to a ballot to increase pressure to make the employer reconsider.

40% forced office attendance

As well as pay, SG have a dispute brewing on hybrid working. The employer announced on 7 May 2025 (without union consultation) a mandatory office attendance of 40% for staff in Core SG from October 25 and the intent to increase this further. PCS representations, including the particularly negative impact on staff with disabilities has been ignored and no Equality Impact Assessment has been forthcoming.

Incredibly what has also been revealed is huge contempt for union representation across the most senior layers of SG. An FOI on Director General emails from April 2024 showed just how deep this contempt goes  with some DGs arguing to implement 60% now and consult PCS as a tick box exercise. Everything indicates that a forced return to offices is what SG wants – unless we stop it.

Social Security Scotland are already under a compulsory 40%, with Disclosure Scotland and Transport Scotland indicating they’ll do the same. Now, with Core threatening likewise, almost all SG members will be subject to compulsory office attendance. Social Security members have also experienced attacks on flexible working and reasonable adjustments, more in line with DWP than what was badged as a “progressive” new benefits agency for Scotland.

The 2025 Scottish Government Group Conference carried policy on hybrid working. This mandates the GEC to lay demands which mean no mandate for all areas of SG – core and NDPBs. Any campaign and fight must be Group-wide, and must not let agencies remain in a worse position than Core staff. Therefore a united campaign right across the Group is needed, and it is clear from members meetings and polls that action to win this is overwhelmingly supported.

We must fight on ALL demands – linking pay and hybrid

BLN members on the SG GEC moved a motion to the June GEC meeting, calling for an escalation of action to achieve our demands on hybrid working and to build a single campaign covering hybrid with pay and conditions. The motion called for members’ meetings to consult members on this approach and then bring this back for further discussion at the next GEC including plans for a consultative ballot.

Unfortunately this position was not supported, rather a petition has been launched to gauge support for our hybrid demands and willingness to fight on them. The GEC is currently considering an options paper on whether to seek support for action on both pay and hybrid in the upcoming consultative ballot – the BLN GEC members have voted to do so, and to ballot on strike and action short of a strike.

The petition launched at the start of July and runs until 1 August. At the time of writing, a rough estimate of turnout sits at over 40% – this is huge for a simple petition that isn’t even a consultative ballot. Respondents’ support for the demands is 90%+, and willingness to take action is 80%+. 200+ respondents have volunteered to get more involved in the campaign.

There is a clear desire to fight on hybrid. The publication of the SG desultory pay offer will only increase the appetite to fight. And if this proves to be the case surely the right thing to do is to fight on all our demands – pay and hybrid – simultaneously and as part of a single battle.

It appears that members support this approach. In Leith, West and Central Scotland, South of Scotland and Highlands & Islands branches, members were asked and overwhelmingly supported acting on both pay and hybrid. Meetings of members working in Transport Scotland and Disclosure Scotland also voted for this approach.

Members at meetings on pay consistently ask about hybrid, and at hybrid meetings link it with pay. As members are forced back into offices, their travel costs will increase and so too will any childcare or other care costs incurred by such a large change for some members. For members already attending 40%, these costs will have been compounding the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and a win on removing % attendance for them would increase the real value of any pay award we could achieve.

Workers spread across the entire nation of Scotland, including in very remote and rural locations, but most roles are contractually linked to offices in large cities – primarily Glasgow and Edinburgh. Many staff were recruited during COVID, when most roles were undertaken 100% at home. SG have previously spoken about how good our hybrid working offer is to protect rural communities and improve accessibility to government jobs for people not living in Scotland’s central belt. But this will cease to be the case if staff are forced back into offices they cannot reasonably travel to.

The majority of the SG GEC remain to be convinced about the need to have one fight linking the issues of pay and conditions including hybrid.  It is clear that when asked, most members think differently and support the approach that BLN supporters have consistently argued for. One fight, one campaign – that will strengthen our ability to win.

We know from successful ballots across the union in 2022/23 that joined up campaigns can win concessions – we must now build to force the employer back and build the campaign capable of doing so.

If you agree with the above and want to help build fighting campaigns across the whole union,  join the Broad Left Network. If you’re an SG member, make sure to sign the hybrid petition and look out for the consultative ballot on pay (and hopefully hybrid!) coming soon.

Fight Back Against HMRC’S Outsourcing Plans!

On Wednesday June the 25th HMRC announced, without prior consultation with PCS, that it plans to engage a ‘Managed Service Provider’ (MSP) as early as during quarter 4 of 2025. This is management talk for bringing in outsourcing work, particularly across Customer Service Group (CSG).
It is apparently clear then, that HMRC have not learned the lessons from it’s last experience with a MSP.

Concentrix

Between May 2014 and November 2016 the private agency firm Concentrix was used to handle Tax Credits calls. The contract was terminated early in November of 2016 following the disasterous experience. Private companies are target and profit making focused and driven organisations, that have no business being paid out of the public purse. For HMRC, Concentrix were a quick fix compared to allocating recources and investing in the hiring and training of permanent staff. The whole experience had severe consequences for claimants. In fact several MPs at the time debated this issue in Parliament and condemned HMRC and Concnetrix for “gross failure of customer service”.

A Work and Pensions Committee (WPC) report concluded that there was a “Cut first, think later” attitude that “Plunged claimants into humiliating hardship and debt”. The report went on to refer to a “Guilty until proven innocent” approach and commented that 90% of initial appeals against decisions were actually upheld. Despite the report finding that there had been a “high human cost of errors” it also pointed out that HMRC had been demanding and pressuring Concentrix into finding even more cuts! The consequences to claimants were severe, with some expressing feeling no option but to take their own lives as a result of hardship. 

The Concentrix staff taking these highly distressing calls weren’t trained in how to handle these life or death situations. They are also of course not empowered to change the conditions of the pro-business pro-capitalist approach taken by HMRC and other civil service departments under austerity governments, to slash public spending and put claimants in such desperate positions in the first place. 

Consequently, Concentrix staff themselves suffered mental harm through no fault of their own, and were also victims of this doomed contract alongside the claimants.

This insufficient provision is no accident, it is baked into all outsourcing. Improper training and worse terms and conditions for outsourced staff are a recipe for providing a service on the cheap. HMRC have indicated that MSP staff will be used to address basic queries from service users but as the disastrous Concentrix experience shows, HMRC downplay the complexity of the work our telephony staff do in order to get as low a quote as possible. This knowing disregard for providing quality support for ordinary working people who rely on HMRC is unacceptable.



The Cost to Our Members

In addition to the consequences of bringing in MSPs for claimants and the degrading of services provided by HMRC, the words of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) not ours! The use of MSPs will have a negative and potentially job threatening impact on Civil Servants employed with permanent contracts.
HMRC have not yet confirmed which MSP they intend to use, or what the pay and working conditions of those agency staff might look like, but there can be no doubt that MSP workers will be treated as a quick and cheap fix. Instead of employing staff on a permanent basis and investing time and money into the training and retention of those staff, HMRC will take advantage of a minimum wage work force with worse or no employment protections, and will likely provide the bare minimum training necessary. Ask any worker in any industry what their experiences of outsourcing is, or ask agency workers themselves, and you will hear reports along the above mentioned lines.

There is a real danger then, that a two tier workforce will be created, and the; pay, terms and conditions of staff employed by the MSP could be used in negotiations by HMRC to attempt to undercut the; pay, terms and conditions of permanently employed, union organised civil servants.

Members in the Surge and Rapid Response team (SRRT, an in-sourced department used to address surges in demand, work backlogs or crisis situations across government) are first in the firing line with most of SRRT’s staff currently engaged in CSG deployments and with the drying up of any other work for SRRT in recent years. The question must be asked, what happens to SRRT members of staff when compared to a cheaper, less union organised and more exploitable option?

Another Labour U-Turn

This announcement by HMRC is disappointing for many reasons, but not least in light of the present Government’s pledge in their election manifesto. Along with disgusting attacks on; pensioners, the disabled and the watering down of it’s promises to the trade unions, Labour is once again affirming it’s position as a representative of bankrupt British Capitalism. This government is sending a message just one year into it’s term, that rather than focus on consolidation and the development of our public services it would rather outsource and sell the running of our public services to private companies who prize profits above social needs. To quote the pledge referred to in the Labour Party’s election manifesto;

‘Labour will learn the lessons from the collapse of Carillion and bring about the biggest wave of in-sourcing of public services in a generation. A Labour Government will end the Tories’ ideological drive to privatise our public services, extend the Freedom of Information Act to apply to private companies that hold contracts to provide public services, exclusively with regard to information relevant to those contracts, to ensure any outsourced contracts are transparent and accountable for delivery. We will also extend the Freedom of Information Act to publicly funded employers’ associations, where not already covered.’

Fight Back!

This threat to members’ jobs, pay, terms and conditions cannot be allowed to go unanswered. So what can be done? Here is what the BLN says:

– In discussion going forward the GEC must continue to be clear and firm with HMRC. The GEC must express it’s contempt for this move, including the fact that HMRC did not consult or negotiate with the GEC prior to it’s announcement.

– Every PCS branch in HMRC Group should organise members meetings. The meetings should be used to fully brief members about this development and gather the views, and the fighting ideas of our members.

– PCS should raise with members the prospect of industrial action or action short of a strike, in this case ‘Work to rule’.

– This issue should be included in a wider campaign in HMRC, to fight on; pay, office attendance and employee relations. A single, unifying campaign would allow the Group to develop a fighting strategy to win for members on a range of the issues that matter to them.

– The GEC should make representations to the PCS Parliamentary Committee (PPC), calling on MPs to once again raise opposition to HMRC’s use of an MSP, in parliament. Members should write to their local MPs raising PCS concerns.

– Do you agree with us, join the BLN! Get involved! And join the fight for a campaigning, fighting and democratic PCS that is capable of winning on in-sourcing, pay, terms and conditions.