Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

The truth about PDS

Socialist Resistance no16  |  page 7-8

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

Tony Blair recently stated 'those [in the Civil Service] who, relative to their peers, are in the lowest 20 per cent of

comparative performance will have to address the causes of poorer performance and will be moved out if they can't meet the demands of the job.

*Rigour about performance must be at the heart of a leaner more effective Civil Service'.

In other words, Blair wants to sack civil servants or make them work harder and longer for lower pay.

Over 97 percent of members of the Public and Commercial Services Union voted to reject the PDS performance related pay system in a union ballot. Previous systems in the DWP and its predecessors have proved divisive and discriminatory.

Ethnic minority staff, members of staff with disabilities and parttimers often find themselves awarded lower performance ratings than other groups.

Under the previous systems, staff often would appeal against their performance rating if they believed it to be unfair. However under PDS the grounds for appeal are severely limited.

The Department of Work and Pensions wishes to increase the performance save 10 per cent in pensions costs. award at all. ment/appraisal. new appeals and quota system. share of performance related pay in future pay awards.

Workers' basic wage will be reduced under PDS and their pay award will become more and more dependent upon their allege

By driving down the basic wage, the DWP has estimated it car

Under the new quotas for PDS half the staff at the to a point where they will qualify for no performance

The Ministry of Defence also has a system of relative assessThe performance of MOD staff is not judged on whether they reached their targets or not, but on how they performed relative to another group of workers that are allegedly comparable.

The Public and Commercial Services Union is requesting the High Court to declare PDS illegal as the Department has unilateral ly changed the terms and conditions of staff through introducing it

page 8 of the scan

8 soclalist resistance May 2004 .... Hard Labour THE EURO-elections on June 10 are the first national test of opinion since the 2001 general election. What has Blair done since then for those who gave him and New Labour the benefit of the doubt, and returned them to office for a second term? JOHN LISTER has been digging back through the cuttings to find out.