United Kingdom - Civil service union responds to government budget - March 25, 2010

On 24 March (budget day), PCS, the public and commercial services union, responded to the government budget as up to 200,000 civil and public servants from across the country stayed away from work in a strongly supported budget day strike over cuts to redundancy pay. Mark Serwotka, PCS General Secretary, said: “Today’s budget of so called efficiency savings, makes it clear that the reason the government is ripping up the contracts of loyal civil servants is to make it easier and cheaper for whoever wins the election to cut them. It is ludicrous to think that efficiency savings can be somehow pulled out from down the back of the sofa and have no effect on services.”

English: http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/news_centre/index.cfm/id/A97D6BA8-D05B-4DAE-AA0296A2C55CC080

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI atwww.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2009.