When civil service workers took national strike action on November 5, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said:
"Hundreds of thousands of members are taking a stand against arbitrary cuts which will decimate services we all rely on from the cradle to the grave.
"The people on strike today are not faceless bureaucrats or your bowler hatted Sir Humphreys, but people, who collect the taxes to build hospitals and schools, get the unemployed in to work and protect our shores from illegal contraband.
"Cuts on this scale will do nothing to improve service delivery and mean people will have to travel further to access services. Decent public services need civil servants to deliver them.
"Members are angry to be faced with such damaging cuts, anger which will only be compounded if plans to increase the pension age get the green light.
"The public will be inconvenienced, but it will be nothing like the inconvenience of having to wait longer, seeing your local benefit or tax office closed or not being able to access vital services as and when you need them."
Museums, courts, jobcentres, customs and tax offices were amongst many of the services either closed or operating a vastly reduced service as up to 200,000 civil servants across 160 government depJobs at risk include
people who collect
the taxes to build
hospitals and
schools, and get the
unemployed in to
work artments and agencies stayed away from work in a one-day stoppage over government plans to axe 100,000 civil and public servants.
The PCS were keen to reach out to both the public and other trade unionists both on the strike day and more generally in their campaign to protect jobs and servIces.
Many on picket lines were leafleting passers by explaining the services that were under threat. Local public meetings were organised in many places in the run up to the day as well as rallies during the strike itself.
It is good news that the TUC has provided further backing for the union's campaign by branding the cuts a "false economy.
Arguing in a new report that the public sector is not inherently inefficient and that the civil service is the right size, the TUC says the job cuts will hit the morale and capabilities of the public servants expected to implement government reforms.
But as the PCS considers the next steps in its campaign it is clear that both more sustained strike action from their members and greater solidarity across the public sector is needed if this battle is to be won.
Conversely, this is a fight that could provide a real national focus for discontent against new labour's attacks on jobs, conditions including pensions) and services across the public sector.
Every trade union and Respect branch needs to be inviting PCS speakers in the new year and preparing concrete solidarity when the next round of action is announced.