Good for them, it is a shame its not national with Unison and all the others taking unified action!

The Mark Sewotka interview this mornign was a bit of an eye-opener. I had no idea that redundancy payments in the public sector were three years’ salary. Three years! Bloody hellfire! And they’re up in arms at the prospect of this being reduced to a guaranteed two years’ salary! Yassus.

And how was this described by Serwotka? As being ‘slightly better’ than the private sector. ‘Kin oath it is. Try one week’s pay for every year worked (statutory minimum, as paid out in quite a few high-profile white-collar redundancies recently) or, if you have a good and generous employer, one month’s salary for every year worked.

So, heart not entirely bleeding I have to admit.

Tim J, the organisation I work for it is not just about redundancy payments….it is also looking at cutting my pay…I work shifts at present, and get a shift allowance for this..they are looking to take that from me….they are also looking to put my job out to the private sector (which would be dangerous!!), and I have been advised I probably would not be required in my current position….so I ask you, if this where happening to you, would you strike?!?!? For your info, I have never taken industrial action before in my life and I have done this with a very heavy heart and a lot of guilt, but how many times can you be kicked in the teeth before you say enough?!?

so I ask you, if this where happening to you, would you strike?!?!?

If I was faced with the prospect of having my pay frozen and the risk of large-scale redundancies in my sector? No, I wouldn’t. By which I mean, no I didn’t, given that my pay’s been frozen for over a year, and my sector has seen shedloads of redundancies. The private sector doesn’t tend to go on strike very often.

RJ,

“they are also looking to put my job out to the private sector (which would be dangerous!!)”

Dangerous to whom? But more to the point, you can strike over this as much as the other issues (which I agree are worth a strike, but what you expect to achieve is beyond me – the money is not there), but in the same way as a private sector employee has no choice over whether their company is sold, a public sector employee has no direct choice (other than throught their vote) over whether their service is privatised. Or do you want to claim special privileges?

If we’re talking only about the redundancy changes, then I’m with Tim J. From the R4 interview this morning, IIRC, these changes only affect the higher-paid civil servants and the terms will /still/ be very generous. Two years guaranteed pay! Bloody hell.

You mean the bastards who make me queue up to beg for it every time I want to get into my own country are on strike? I do hope they fire the lot of them.

People it’s very difficult to make redundant on strike for better redundancy pay than those people who it is very easy to make redundant get.

I think this is one of those strikes which we can all happily break, don’t you?

“I think this is one of those strikes which we can all happily break, don’t you?”

Funny, the conclusion which I draw from “workers who join a trade union get better pay and conditions than those who don’t” is “join a union”, not “cheer on the people trying to make pay and conditions worse”.

Don, would you mind emailing me? I want to send you something. ta.

@2 The two Mark Serwotka points in the Today interview that hit home for me were:

A large percentage (40% was it?) of PCS members are on less than £15k per year.

They have accepted that low pay for years on the understanding that it’s a fair swap for a secure job and a contract that guarantees a decent redundancy payment (as negotiated by the Thatcher govt in 1988, no doubt at that time in lieu of a decent pay rise for reasons now long forgotten).

The government has now unilaterally torn up that contract.

I don’t know enough about specific circumstances to feel qualified to comment on this strike.

But surely it can’t be correct that redundancy pay is three years’ salary? I mean, that’s so out of proportion to the private sector that it has the whiff of Tory propaganda about it to me.

Alternatively… could redundancy be getting conflated with the lump sum element of the pension?

12 – Only if you think that the head of the PCS Union is a Tory stooge. All I’m basing this on is Serwotka’s interview with the Today programme this morning. The fragrant Tessa Jowell’s defence is as follows:

“Those earning £30,000 or less – 80% of all staff – will still get up to between two and three years’ salary, while civil servants earning over £30,000 will have redundancy pay capped at two times their salary.”

14 – From the PCS website:

“The new arrangements would cap any payments at two years pay and with no access to early payment of unreduced pension unless you give up your cash sum to buy out the actuarial reduction. In a voluntary redundancy situation departments will have flexibility to design their own schemes but subject to this two year cap.”

http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/campaigns/cscs/

In other words, yes, it’s the lump sum element of the pension. You can argue about whether this is reasonable or not, but it’s misleading to pretend it’s comparable to the month’s money most private sector contracts give you on redundancy.

That said, could be put in clearer terms.

“In other words, yes, it’s the lump sum element of the pension. ”

No it isn’t. Read it again.

“cap any payments at two years pay and with no access to early payment of unreduced pension unless you give up your cash sum to buy out the actuarial reduction.”

What it’s saying is that, say, at 58 you get made redundant. You don’t get to draw your full 60 year old pension unless you cough up the difference between being pensioned at 58 and 60 out of your redundo.

“Funny, the conclusion which I draw from “workers who join a trade union get better pay and conditions than those who don’t” is “join a union”, not “cheer on the people trying to make pay and conditions worse”.”

When I’m the one paying the better conditions I go for the latter.

@16 The point is that staff have been working for low wages on the understanding that these generous redundancy terms were part of the total package.

This total package has now been unilaterally withdrawn without any compensatory increase in the monthly salary – indeed, on the back of a pay freeze.

‘The Mark Sewotka interview this mornign was a bit of an eye-opener. I had no idea that redundancy payments in the public sector were three years’ salary. Three years! Bloody hellfire! And they’re up in arms at the prospect of this being reduced to a guaranteed two years’ salary! Yassus.’

That three years is part of the terms and conditions already in place. It’s part of the reason civil servants accept crap wages while they are still in work. Take away that compensation and civil servants will rightly ask for a pay rise so that they can save or take out a private pension for when they leave work. It’s a false economy.

‘You mean the bastards who make me queue up to beg for it every time I want to get into my own country are on strike?’

I think you might find that it’s the government who make that decision and the public who vote for them.

@jonn

I think 3 years is an absolute maximum I.e. If 30 or so years of working continuously.

Obviously this applies to very few staff – and any plan of redundancies would obviously look to do voluntary redundancy and less experienced staff first as this would be far cheaper.

I think the action is ill-advised by the way – and appears to have little support even within PCS (very low turnout on the ballot and many crossing picket lines).

I was speaking to a member of PCS who is not a member of any political party the other day, and he was saying he could stomach the changes to redundancy payments, what he thought was disgraceful and the reason he was out on strike was because the employers have waited ’till the end of a no-compulsory redundancies agreement to end to review redundancy terms and then closed hundreds of offices making thousands of workers redundant.

Of course, in order for it to be a national strike, it needs to technically be over redundancy payments, as the redundancies don’t affect everyone and if they were the grounds, some of the people out on strike would be solidarity striking. But the legal reason for the strike is not always the same as the thing that is motivating grassroots members.

“And how was this described by Serwotka? As being ’slightly better’ than the private sector. ‘Kin oath it is. Try one week’s pay for every year worked (statutory minimum, as paid out in quite a few high-profile white-collar redundancies recently) or, if you have a good and generous employer, one month’s salary for every year worked.

So, heart not entirely bleeding I have to admit.”

Look, this isn’t even an argument. You don’t like your terms and conditions of employment, do something about it. Don’t waste your time and union members’ time attacking those who are defending their pay and conditions. The lazy argument that because you don’t enjoy these terms (‘generous terms’ – bullshit; ask Fred Goodwin what a generous pension is!) nobody else should is infantile. Use these as a benchmark to fight for your own pension.

You think you deserve more than what civil servants are getting? Well fight for it then! But don’t in the meantime have a go at those who have the courage to do what you won’t.

Get organised, get educated and fight back!

One more thing – these attacks on the public sector are coming thick and fast now, and will only get worse as the Tories use the credit crunch to cut huge swathes of important services. If you want your public servants de-skilled, or are happy to see the most vulnerable users (and it’s no secret it’s always the most vulnerable who suffer first and hardest by public sector cuts) left without vital public services then fine, carry on, but if we want a public sector we can be proud of we need to defend them and actions like this.

Tim J @ 2

So, heart not entirely bleeding I have to admit.

Its not so much a bleeding heart issue, it is one about the rule of contracts and employment law.

People may argue that these terms and conditions are over generous and perhaps a downright liberty. However, these were the negotiated terms and conditions for which the people were employed. If we are able to rip up and ignore those terms and conditions merely because, thirty years after the ink dried, it doesn’t look like such a good deal, then who else suffers?

What if things had turned out differently and redundancy packages in the private sector had outstripped the public sector, would the Government be willing to top up the public sector? Or would they be waving these self same contracts under the noses of disgruntled staff? I suspect the latter. A few weeks ago, MPs were squealing like stuck pigs at the retrospective nature of the settlement over the expenses furore, well now they know how mortals feel, because retrospective terms and conditions are imposed on us all the time.

This is yet another example of Government neatly side stepping an issue with a theatrical wink to crowd and removing the legal terms and conditions from ‘unpopular people’ as long as ‘the rest of us’ are safe. The Government will only use such tactics against the weak and the relatively defenceless. Other contracts will be honoured as long as the low paid can be expected to get a kick in the balls. And they wonder why people have turned of politics?

Of course, if Labour Party MPs are convinced that such retrospective actions are for the good of the Country, then perhaps they would forgo their healthy ‘resettlement packages’ for the statuary minimum redundacy? No? I thought not, the fucking parasites.

Its not so much a bleeding heart issue, it is one about the rule of contracts and employment law.

People may argue that these terms and conditions are over generous and perhaps a downright liberty. However, these were the negotiated terms and conditions for which the people were employed. If we are able to rip up and ignore those terms and conditions merely because, thirty years after the ink dried, it doesn’t look like such a good deal, then who else suffers?

If the employer informs the employee about the prospective change, but is unable, after negotiation, to agree an amendment, the employer is perfectly within his rights to terminate the existing contract and offer the employee a new one on the amended terms. The employee can then decide whether he wants to take it up or not. That’s employment law, that is.

Tim J @ 25

Then what is the point of employment law then? If an employer can just rip up a contract and impose a new set of terms and conditions when he likes, surely that makes employment contracts un-enforceable? If we allow any employer the right just to rip up contracts of employment at a whim, then why do so many footballers sit in the reserves taking say 40 grand a week, when according to ‘the law’ the team could just as easily tear up the contract and replace it with a minimum wage contract? Why did we pay out bonuses to bankers, when we could just burned those contracts in front of their eyes?

On the other hand, given that doctors are seento have over generous contracts as well (different thread though), why doesn’t the Government just tear up that contract and impose a new one?

What about all those limbless squadies? Think of the vast amounts of money if we ripped up the parts of those contracts that payout on a no fault basis.

While we are here, why not simply rip up the contracts of the PFI,PPP schemes around the Country as well as those overspent IT projects for that matter? All those ad agencies, management consultants etc.

Once the Government starts tearing up legal contracts, the whole economic system is up shit creek, but I suppose as long as it only rips up the contracts of the weak and/or the unpopular and leave the people with powerfull lawyers alone, we should be alright. Lets face it, people in the Labour Party are quite happy to see people ripped off as long as it the right people that are being ripped off.

If we allow any employer the right just to rip up contracts of employment at a whim, then why do so many footballers sit in the reserves taking say 40 grand a week, when according to ‘the law’ the team could just as easily tear up the contract and replace it with a minimum wage contract? Why did we pay out bonuses to bankers, when we could just burned those contracts in front of their eyes?

They’re not trying to rip it up. They’re trying to amend it. And in order to do that, there is an obligation to negotiate towards a settlement. Which has been done in this case (five out of six unions have accepted the amendment). If agreement is still impossible, then there has been a break down of agreement between employer and employee – and the recourse then is to terminate the existing contract.

Now, the employee will retain all the rights he has accrued under that contract up to the point of its termination (including in this case the redundancy payments everyone’s complaining about). And if the employer withheld rights under that contract, then he would be acting in breach of it, and would be liable to being sued. But, provided process is followed, the contract would have been correctly terminated.

It’s a blunderbuss measure, and it’s expensive for the employer, so it’s only used as a last resort. But it ultimately means that stalemate doesn’t result from irreconcilable disputes.

Which more or less answers your footballers and bankers points. Footballers sit in the reserves because it’s too expensive to fire them. Bankers were paid bonuses because they had a contractual right to them. Reserve footballers risk not having their contracts renewed, however, and a whole lot of contracts in the City have been changed to get rid of guaranteed bonuses.

Tim @ 27

They’re not trying to rip it up. They’re trying to amend it

It didn’t come across like that in the reports I saw and read over the weekend. It very much appeared that the government where trying to retrospectively ‘amend’ the terms of service. One guy on radio 5 yesterday said that the Government were trying to cut his redunandacy pay, should he get it, by about a third. He would still get a lot of money (32 years service) and more money that the private sector would pay, but still a lot less than he would be entitled to, if he was made redundant.

It very much appeared that the government where trying to retrospectively ‘amend’ the terms of service. One guy on radio 5 yesterday said that the Government were trying to cut his redunandacy pay, should he get it, by about a third

That’s not a retrospective amendment. If he was made redundant now, then the existing contract would apply. It’s a prospective amendment that might take effect in the future. A retrospective amendment would, for example, have changed his pension entitlements based on contributions already made. Except the public sector don’t have a contributory pension system obviously.

Tim J @ 29

That’s not a retrospective amendment. If he was made redundant now, then the existing contract would apply

That is not how it has came across, to be honest, Tim. It comes across as an attempt to cut the current redundancy packages.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/02/public-sector-workers-major-strikes

“Workers are being robbed of their accrued rights so it is no wonder they feel so angry. The government is ripping up contracts and is showing shameful double standards by being tough on the low paid but letting highly paid bankers off the hook by allowing them to keep their contractual rights to huge bonuses.”

Here is what the Governmet want to change:

Civil servants receive a month’s pay for every year they have worked for the government going up to two months’ after longer service. The changes would lower the cap on payments from three to two years, so that a worker on a salary of £24,000 who had worked for the civil service for over 20 years would have their redundancy pay cut by over £20,000.

That looks pretty retrospective to me.

That looks pretty retrospective to me.

It would only be retrospective if it affected things that have already happened. Trying to change things that might happen in the future isn’t retrospective – pretty much by definition.

Tim J @ 31

It would only be retrospective if it affected things that have already happened. Trying to change things that might happen in the future isn’t retrospective

That is a feeble attempt to split hairs.

These workers have served in the civil service for the specified time at a given rate of redundancy, the Government want to impose a new rate on that accrued service time. That, by any reasonable standard is a retrospective cut in terms and conditions.

32: and the workers have the right to accept of reject those terms.

You reject the future terms of a job by going and finding another job.

Tim @ 33

These workers have agreed to the terms they signed up for, in some cases, thirty plus years ago. The Government now want to renage on those terms now and retrospectively cap their entitlement to redundacy payments. Redundancy entitlements that they have already earned.

1) The next government is going to have to greatly reduce spending.

2) These spending cuts should be managed so that as little of the pain as possible is borne by the poor and vulnerable.

3) It follows that these spending cuts should be managed so that as much of the pain as possible is borne by the people who are NOT poor and vulnerable.

4) Since the average wage in the public sector is higher than that in the private sector, it must be much higher than the income of most of the people who depend on public services, such as welfare claimants or pensioners.

5) Most public sector employees therefore fall into the catagory of people who are NOT poor and vulnerable.

6) It follows that most of the cost of the spending cuts should fall on them, rather than on the people who depend on public services, such as welfare claimants or pensioners.

“Since the average wage in the public sector is higher than that in the private sector…”

Er, false assumption.

ad @ 35

Some pretty big leaps of logic there, ad. When we start cutting public services, who do you think suffers most? Surely public servents serve er, the public? Therefore cutting these jobs will further reduce the service the public gets and make the poor even worse off?

36. Not according to this article:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/public_sector/article6974029.ece

“Figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that average annual earnings of public sector workers rose to £22,405 last year — compared with £20,988 paid to the average private sector worker.”

37. Offering public sector workers lower wages, worse redundancy terms etc will not in itself harm the users of public services, nor will it harm pensioners, benefit claimants etc.

“Figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that average annual earnings of public sector workers rose to £22,405 last year — compared with £20,988 paid to the average private sector worker.”

There’s a rather large problem with such a side by side comparison isn’t there?

Eleven letters, begins with O, ‘modernisers’ love it.

Obfuscation?

Onanismistic?

ad @ 37
Er, of course it will. Cutting low paid workers wages will lead to a lowering of morale among them. OAP use home helps for example. Cutting the numbers employed and kicking the lungs of those that are left will ensure that the service goes downhill and those OAPs will suffer most.

Think about the damage done when we drove the hospital cleaners wages down. We now have hospitals smeared with filth, but hey! We ‘saved nearly 50 pence and hour in the process!!!

Last week we were told that the Food Standards Agency is sending staff out around the chip shops. To tell the chippies to make their chips fatter.

I have a feeling that it will be possible to cut the public sector wage bill without actually cutting front line services at all.

It’s these sort of strikes that the government should be worried about. Many of them are voters, s if Labour continues to screw them, then the opposition parties will almost certainly benefit from this.

Cutting low paid workers wages will lead to a lowering of morale among them. OAP use home helps for example.

42. As I pointed out, public sector workers are not, on average, especially poorly paid. And if the same people doing the same jobs do them worse after the cuts in their entitlements, that can only be because they are taking their dissatisfaction out on the people who depend on public services. And those people are especially badly off, so taking it out on them looks rather spiteful and unpleasant.

The government has a choice. It can either:

a) Cut benefits. This will harm benefits claimants, who are, on average, especially vulnerable people.

b) Cut the number of people receiving benefits. This will harm some benefits claimants, who are, on average, especially vulnerable people.

c) Cut the number of people on the public sector payroll. This will harm some public sector workers. Our Prime Minister used to claim that this would inevitably harm the people who depend on public services, but apparently he has changed his mind since.

d) Cut the pay or entitlements of people on the public sector payroll. This will harm public sector workers, but will leave all the same people doing all the same jobs as before.

Common sense suggests that the option which does least damage to the most vulnerable is option d). Having said that, I expect that the next government, whoever they are, will mostly rely on a) and b). People on benefits don’t have a union, and cannot go on strike.

And the more you protect the people who are in work, and do have unions, and are not especially badly off, the more you force the next government to hammer the people who are the most vulnerable, and who cannot fight back.

@38

““Figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that average annual earnings of public sector workers rose to £22,405 last year — compared with £20,988 paid to the average private sector worker.””

That’s partly down down to redundancies in the lower pay grades which haven’t been equalled in the higher pay grades, thereby raising the average. I’m one of the lucky ones who had a 1% pay rise last year. Many had their pay frozen.