E2 Cuts in the civil service compensation scheme (CSCS)
Submitted by: Public and Commercial Services Union
Congress notes that on 31 July 2009 the Government published proposals for cuts in the civil service compensation scheme (CSCS). The CSCS provides funding for redundancy and early retirement.
Congress notes that in the media the cuts have been presented as reform to end gold-plated pay-offs. In reality, the proposals threaten to strip hundreds of thousands of staff, including the low paid, of their current entitlements to compensation in the event of redundancy and make compulsory redundancy more likely.
Congress believes that the proposals represent a crude attempt to make job cuts on the cheap at a time when jobs are threatened by plans for massive public spending cuts as a solution to the national debt arising from the current financial crisis.
Congress further notes that staff become more ‘attractive’ targets for the private sector in terms of work being outsourced if terms and conditions are less expensive and that therefore the cuts to the CSCS would make further privatisation in the civil service more likely.
Congress notes the proposals have been unanimously rejected by the civil service trade unions.
Congress believes the proposals are a dangerous precedent and gives full support to the civil service trade unions in their efforts to defend members’ entitlements. Congress calls on the General Council to make clear this position to the Government and use its influence to seek a re-opening of negotiations.
Mover: Public and Commercial Services Union
Seconder: Prospect
Supporters: FDA, POA
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The represents a clear attack on our terms and conditions and is a clear indication of the direction the government want to move in terms of job cuts and privatisation I urge the TUC to support this Motion and get behind PCS as an attack on our conditions will lead to an attack on everyone else’s time to fight back I further urge some unions who feel by just smiling nicely to New Labour the problem will go away to actually listen to your members for a change.
The TUC published research this month which shows that taxpayers are in fact spending twice as much on private sector fat cat pensions than on public sector pensions – £2.50 for subsidising the pensions of the richest one per cent of the population for every pound spent on paying pensions to retired public servants such as nurses, teachers and civil servants. This is important as the public is constantly peddled the myth that we are somehow in a special protected position.
The attack on the Civil Service Compensation Scheme is only the prelude for government raids on Civil Service pensions in due course. There is little public sympathy but then the public is in denial – remember that in reality the average public servant on a pension receives only £7,000!
Well done PCS for bring this motion, many of the former civil srevants I know who get a pension are only surviving, only a few get the benefits what the media protrays and these rae the senior civil servants who gte paid wages that are six figures. without a civil service this country would be in a mess…
They’ve said that this is nothing whatsoever to do with planning redundancies. How dim do they think we are?
Excuse my cynicism but I think agenda is clear: make conditions so bad that people want to leave of their own accord, sell the work off to private companies and TUPE those who are left on terms as beneficial to the private sector as possible.
I feel the CSCS attack is a pivotal point. It’s more important than pay, more important than pensions, more important than other terms and conditions. If these cuts go ahead the floodgates of redundancy and privatisation will open wide and the Civil Service will be washed away into the waiting nets of shareholder profit.