The national campaign strike ballot has started. It runs until the 1st December. Check your home email boxes for your ballot link (or the post if you are in Northern Ireland or if the union doesn’t have your email address). Vote YES for strike action and YES for action short of strikes.
We are fighting to improve pay, to protect jobs, and to improve pensions and conditions. This article explains what we want on pay and why it is vital to vote YES/YES.
Government Pay Remit – Nowhere Near Enough
Each year the government sets a limit on increases to our pay – the civil service pay remit. This year their limit is 3.5% plus an optional 0.5% to deal with pay compression at the lower end of pay structures – in practice this means the pay of our lowest paid members will be permanently linked to the national minimum wage.
The union has rejected this 3.5% pay limit. It’s nowhere near enough to meet the needs of our members. The cost-of-living figures for September show a 3.5% increase which completely takes away the pay increase proposed by the government.
The cost-of-living crisis is set to get worse. The energy price cap has risen again by 4%, following a 13% increase in July. A litre of petrol now costs £1.74 – up 31.5% since March! These and other price increases are expected to push the cost of living up by the end of the year to well over 4%.
The current cost-of-living crisis deals a further blow to the value of our pay -which in real terms has fallen on average by about 20% since 2010. So our claim is not only about maintaining and improving the value of our current pay, it’s also about a start in restoring the value of what we have lost.
Our Pay Demands
We are demanding a 10% fully funded pay rise to meet the current cost living crisis and to make a start in restoring the value of our pay that has been lost over the years due to pay not keeping pace with inflation. The government pay remit of 3.5% is only 2% funded, which means the difference will be made up with cuts in other expenditures-further job cuts!
We are demanding £18 per hour minimum – it’s not acceptable that the government should pay its employees the national minimum wage which only pretty lousy employers are required to pay.
We are demanding £5,000 for London Weighting to reflect the living costs of members in London
We are demanding pay restoration. Our pay has been massively cut in real terms as a result, especially since 2010 , of government pay restrictions/freezes keeping our pay well below inflation. On average this amounts to a 20% loss in real terms which we want the government to commit to restoring.
We are demanding the return to national pay bargaining and restoring automatic pay progression and shortening pay scales. It’s an outrage that staff in government departments and linked bodies doing similar jobs are on different pay and conditions.
Vote YES To Strike-Vote Yes To Action Short Of Strikes
In 2023, more than 100,000 PCS members took strike action and forced the government to put more money on the table. It wasn’t enough, but it shows if we fight then we can win.
The Broad Left Network has consistently argued for a serious national campaign on pay, jobs, pensions and conditions. Now we’ve got the ballot, our job is to win it. A YES/YES vote gives PCS the mandate to take national action, targeted paid strikes and action short of strike to put pressure on the government and win more money, better conditions and protect jobs.
