government wages crackdown
WORKERS, DECEMBER 2003 ISSUE
The government is looking to make workers pay for its re-election. The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, will present his pre-budget statement on 10 December, but civil servants in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) already know that headline spending plans will come at a cost to them.
The government's ambitious plans for education and health spending have been criticised by workers in those sectors for not paying enough attention to finding and paying the staff to carry them out. Now the government is taking a leaf out of the private sector book in the way it is paying its own employees. Tax revenues are falling, welfare payments and tax credits are costing more than planned.
The message has gone out from the Treasury that money is tight and that the way is to cut costs. An increasing proportion of central government running costs is locked into PFI and private partnership style contracts. What is left is to crack down on wages, which is not so much new Labour as old ruling class.
On 20 November managers in DWP imposed a pay award on their 90,000 workers just days before a delayed postal ballot was due to close. The offer they were voting on was worth only 2.6%, with nothing to deal with low pay prevalent in DWP. It also included a controversial bonus scheme.
The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) was furious, suspecting its members in DWP were being goaded into a dispute. Civil service pay has been split up into many separate negotiations since the days of Thatcher. PCS has set its aim this year to bring bargaining back to the national stage. It knows that the Treasury sets the rates anyway, and that departmental managers have little say.
The DWP pay deal was due on 1st April, and civil servants working there are getting frustrated at the delay. Some departments, the Inland Revenue being the largest, signed up for 3-year deal in 2002. Few others in the civil service have finalised pay for 2003. DWP is one of the largest departments waiting to settle, which is why they suspect they are being used.