Around 135,000 workers from the two largest government departments are holding joint rolling strikes over imposed cuts. Jobcentre and benefit office staff from the Department for Work and Pensions will join tax workers from HM Revenue and Customs in a series of regional walkouts. The strikes form part of trade union PCS’s three-month civil service-wide campaign against imposed cuts to pay, pensions, jobs and working conditions, which has involved weeks of industrial action among the union’s 250,000 public sector members since a national walkout on budget day on 20 March 2013. The union says the two departments are at the heart of the political debate about public spending and the workers involved provide invaluable public services – with HMRC collecting and administering the taxes that fund all other public services and the welfare state that are currently being undermined by the Tory-led government.
English: http://union-news.co.uk/2013/06/135000-government-workers-take-strike-action ...
http://union-news.co.uk/2013/06/pcs-strike-campaign-rolls-into-court/
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.