Civil servants begin 48 hour strike

Up to 270,000 civil servants have begun a 48-hour strike over redundancy pay, in what is the biggest unrest by the sector in more than two decades.

Courts, border controls and emergency 999 police call centres are all expected to face severe disruption as staff form pickets nationwide.

The strikes, organised by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), are taking place in opposition to a new agreement that could see staff losing thousands of pounds in entitlements.

The PCS, which represents the bulk of the 500,000-strong civil service workforce, but mainly the junior or lower paid staff, has also organised 20 rallies.

The dispute, which has been simmering for more than a year, concerns cuts of up to a third on compensation payments given for compulsory and voluntary redundancies and early retirements.

The government has said other civil service unions agreed the changes were fair.
Up to a 1,000 civilian staff working for the Met Police, including those manning 999 calls, and hundreds of security staff in the Houses of Parliament are also expected to take strike action for the first time in 25 years.

Police officers at the Met will have to take over 999 calls while the shortage of security staff at the Commons — which now has tight controls — will make it difficult to gain entrance.

General secretary Mark Serwotka said the government had ripped up already low-paid workers’ contractual entitlements to redundancy pay, meaning they could be sacked on the cheap.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s very destabilising for our members, some of whom have worked for over 30 years for the public service, to suddenly realise they could lose their job and actually a large amount of money they would have depended on.

“People over the years have accepted that pay isn’t what it should be but they felt their job was secure and their pension was decent.

“Now in the last few years, 100,000 jobs have gone, and many more are likely to go after the election, so people feel very vulnerable.”