Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

Defend public services Defend civil service jobs! Solidarity with PCS strikers!

Socialist Resistance no20  |  page 24

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.

¡SUBSCRIBE to resistance, Thousands of civil service staff tokk part in strikes on November 5, in the largest stoppage by the civil service union (PCS) in over a decade.

The strikes were called across the country in response to a succession of government policies which threaten not only 104,000 civil service jobs, but also the pay, pensions and working conditions of those civil servants who might keep their jobs.

It is already clear that even job cuts on the scale threatened by ministers would fall far short of the ambitious savings targets set in Gordon Brown's 2004 budget - suggesting that far more radical cutbacks and privatisation are also planned as follow-up moves, with potentially serious consequences for existing services.

Civil service staff in Jobcentres and Social Security offices play a vital role in delivering payments to unemployed and low income claimants, as well as delivering sickness and incapacity benefits, bereavement and carer's benefits, payments for industrial injury and administrative work on the Child Support Agency and the Pension Service.

Today's cheap, cynical headline-grabbing government attack on "faceless bureaucrats" will turn tomorrow into the crisis and collapse of services which are vital to some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. By singling out this one group of workers as sacrificial victims in Gordon Brown's hunt for massive cuts in public spending, the Blair government is behaving like the worst bullying employer.

The PCS has taken the most radical action of any public sector union facing New Labour's onslaught of privatisation and marketstyle reforms. Their stand is one in defence of all our public servIces. That's why it is vital to ensure that they win. SOCIALIST RESISTANCE is a monthly marxist paper. We are offering a

(other overseas. For more details fill in this coupon, ticking the appropriate

box and send to us: PO Box 1109 London N4 2UU Please make

cheques payable to RESISTANCE

• Please send me a year's subscription to the new paper.

I enclose £12 • £15 • £20 • 1 enclose a donation of £

Name ...

Post Code

pcs UNION OFFICIAL DISPUT special introductory subscription rate 1 year for £12 (UK), £15 (Europe) or £20 • Please put me in touch with the nearest RESISTANCE readers' group.

Age. .. Phone. email