You may have
recently received a circular from the Cabinet Office alleging to be the “real
story” about the changes to the civil service compensation scheme (CSCS) to
correct “well-known myths”. Ironically,
the Cabinet Office contains some well-known myths too. We seek to correct them
below:
Myth 1: The CSCS is “out of date” and “had been challenged under age discrimination law”
· CSCS could have been reformed to meet age discrimination legislation, without it being cut. The Cabinet Office is simply attempting to make civil servants cheaper to sack and easier to privatise.
Myth 2: The CSCS created “perverse incentives” where “it could be in someone’s interests to try and leave rather than stay”
· Management approves redundancies so it is only a “perverse incentive” if management allows it!
Myth 3: “Many of the 46 per cent of workers in the Civil Service who earn £20,000 or less will be relatively untouched by the reforms”
·
Almost every member will be potentially worse off in the event of
voluntary redundancy because management will have almost complete discretion.
Myth 4: “we have introduced special protection for the lower paid – and those earning less than £30,000 can get a different deal”
· See above for the reality behind this “special protection”. For those earning over £20,000 but less than £30,000 there is a “different deal” . . . it’s worse.
Myth 5: “a long-serving civil servant earning £20,000 or less can get up to £60,000 – the same as now”
· All staff currently aged under 50 will lose the entitlement to enhanced pension under FER/CER terms once they reach the age of 50. So under this scheme, future long-serving civil servants will be worse off than now
Myth 6: “all but one of the six Civil Service unions believe the new scheme is fair and balanced and a good deal”
· PCS is the largest civil service union, with three times as many civil service members as the others unions combined. It is PCS members who would be most at risk from cuts in the future. Also, NIPSA, the civil service union in Northern Ireland, has not agreed these terms and is taking a judicial review with PCS of the new scheme
Myth 7: “Unfortunately some of the information contained in the union’s communication is not accurate and this has been raised with the PCS by the Cabinet Office”
· We responded to this allegation within 24 hours, and the correspondence is on the PCS website at: http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/campaigns/cscs/cscs-updates-and-briefings/pcs-rebuts-management-propoganda-about-misleading-cscs-claims.cfm. We categorically refute the Cabinet Office’s claims and to date we have not heard anything further from the Cabinet Office on this issue.
..........updated 19/2/2010
To:
All Members in the Revenue & Customs Group
The
employer, both at government and departmental level, is seeking to confuse
matters in relation to ongoing civil service compensation scheme issues. It is important therefore that all members understand the
importance of maintaining maximum pressure on the government and the department
to influence the negotiating process. Attached
to this briefing is the latest PCS rebuttal of Cabinet Office and HMRC messages
about the CSCS. Please circulate
this briefing and the attachment as quickly and widely as possible to all
members.
The Cabinet Office and Other
Unions’ Responses
Negotiations
have been ongoing for the past 18 months between the Cabinet Office and the
representative unions, of which PCS represents the overwhelming majority.
In a recent publication by the Cabinet Office it has portrayed UNITE as
the largest union in the UK. This
is true, but additionally they are the smallest of the civil service unions.
PCS represent over 270,000 civil servants, and membership has jumped by
an additional 5,000 overall and over 800 in the R&C group alone.
The
other five unions, representing less than 100,000 civil service members between
them, believe that the revised offer made by the government represents a
significant improvement on those rejected by all the unions in early December
2009. It is unfortunate that a
Cabinet Office briefing has sought to quote union leaders in the FDA
(representing 12,500 of the most senior civil servants) and Prospect
(representing 34,000 specialists), and which in any event do not represent a
true picture of the revised scheme nor the negotiations to this point.
For
PCS the issue is straightforward - the new proposals, representing the sixth
such ‘final offer’, will leave thousands of PCS members hugely disadvantaged
in the event of redundancy or early severance.
Political resolve
Early Day Motion 251 continues to receive record support, and
at the time of writing 146 MPs across all the political parties have signed to
show their support. Your branch
secretary or organiser will continue to be briefed with a list of MPs joining
the chorus of others to stand with their civil servant constituents.
Further MPs will join, but it relies on you writing to your constituency
MP and insisting that they sign the EDM and pledge support to protect your basic
terms and conditions.
Key points to consider:
·
The
government’s proposals to radically cut the terms of the civil service
compensation scheme are a blatant attempt to prepare the ground for cutting jobs
on the cheap;
·
While the
government says it is about ‘fairness’, it is a particularly cynical move
given the very real fears many members currently have about job security.
·
For
someone aged 41 who earns £24,000 and has 20 years’ service, their current
entitlement would be £72,000. The proposal is to reduce this to £48,000.
·
For
someone aged 51 who earns £24,000 and has 20 years’ service, their current
entitlement if made compulsorily redundant is for an enhanced lump sum of £24,000,
an additional lump sum of £12,000 and an immediate payment of enhanced pension
of £8,000 a year. Their new entitlement would be £48,000 and an unenhanced
pension and lump sum paid only when they reached 60.
CSCS campaign
and the R&C group
All
members at all levels in the PCS Revenue & Customs Group continue to fight
for the reversal of the job cuts and office closure programme in HMRC.
We understand that jobs are vital not only for the local economies and
personal livelihoods, but for the welfare of the country as a whole.
It is clear that changes to the CSCS under the proposals currently on the
table will leave many thousands of members worse off in the event of compulsory
or voluntary redundancy. By degrees
we are seeing small improvements as each successive offer is placed on the
table.
With
the continued support of all PCS members we can preserve the hard earned accrued
rights of all our members.
Dave Bean
Peter Lockhart
Group President
Group Secretary
..........updated 19/2/2010
..........updated 7/2/2010