Macho Men
The Guardian has an interesting piece today about the quality of leadership in one of the main civil service trade unions - PCS.
The article written by a former PCS member, David Calder, criticises the union's general secretary - Mark Serwotka - for refusing to face up to reality and negotiate sensiblly on behalf of ordinary PCS members. Here a summary of the key points.
"Mark Serwotka should go"
"The PCS's swaggering failure to negotiate has left its members exposed to terrible, and preventable, redundancy cuts."
And so that Ozymandias of the trade union movement, Mark Serwotka, has his "victory". Look on his works, ye mighty host of unfortunate civil servants, and despair.
Civil servants are now, thanks in no small part to the tactical clod-footedness of Serwotka's Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), facing a 67% cut to their redundancy entitlements under the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS).
As yet, the finer details of the changes are unclear, but what we know from Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is that the maximum paid out in the event of compulsory redundancies will be 12 months' gross pay, down from the current limit of three years'.
Still not a terrible settlement, particularly by comparison with the statutory redundancy pay cap of £11,400, but certainly a significant drop for those of long service soon to be among the 600,000 out the door.
The tragedy for civil servants is that it didn't have to be like this. One single word from Serwotka four months ago could have secured those hit by redundancy a deal twice, in some cases thrice, as generous as what is now being imposed.
In his twilight in office, Maude's predecessor Sir Gus O'Donnell strove to reform the CSCS, offering the unions a deal which, after months of negotiations, promised increased entitlements to most civil servants earning under £20,000, and a not inconsiderable £60,000 or two years' salary (whichever was the higher) as the maximum redundancy payout for those earning above £20,000.
Five of the six civil service unions agreed that these outcomes were "fair", proclaiming themselves "very pleased" that the settlement took "further account of the position of the low paid". PCS took a different tack.
Firstly there was the staggeringly dishonest strike campaign, where PCS peppered low-paid civil servants with propaganda warning terrifyingly of cuts to the redundancy pay of the lowest earners, not merely misrepresenting but wholly subverting the reality of the proposals. Those who stood to lose most were the highest earners.
PCS turned truth on its head and engineered the perversity of those earning £14,000 a year surrendering two days' pay in striking for managers on £50,000 to keep a £150,000 payoff.
Did the strikes make a difference? The poor and unemployed took a whack. But to the government, both outgoing and incoming, all the strikes showed was that PCS was a union unwilling or unable to negotiate in the real world.
Ever since Gordon Brown belatedly admitted that cuts were a-coming regardless of the colour of the next government, the CSCS was ripe for picking, and PCS should have made it its mission to hammer out a settlement. The five other civil service unions acknowledged this, and battened down the hatches before the rain came. PCS, engrossed in the myth of its own importance, chose to pick a fight, tearing up those hatches and throwing them into the howling winds.
In doing so, PCS has left its members, of which I was until recently one, exposed to the inevitability of harsher cuts than they ever imagined. If PCS had put the long-term interests of its members first, we might not have found ourselves in this situation. PCS' actions constitute a gross dereliction of duty, both to its members and to its understandably furious sister unions, whose 18 months of hard negotiating is now all for nothing.
Mark Serwotka should go."
Yes, it all sounds so familiar - particularly the bit about low paid union members being used as cannon fodder - to defend the interests of their much higher paid colleagues.
The article written by a former PCS member, David Calder, criticises the union's general secretary - Mark Serwotka - for refusing to face up to reality and negotiate sensiblly on behalf of ordinary PCS members. Here a summary of the key points.
"Mark Serwotka should go"
"The PCS's swaggering failure to negotiate has left its members exposed to terrible, and preventable, redundancy cuts."
And so that Ozymandias of the trade union movement, Mark Serwotka, has his "victory". Look on his works, ye mighty host of unfortunate civil servants, and despair.
Civil servants are now, thanks in no small part to the tactical clod-footedness of Serwotka's Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), facing a 67% cut to their redundancy entitlements under the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS).
As yet, the finer details of the changes are unclear, but what we know from Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is that the maximum paid out in the event of compulsory redundancies will be 12 months' gross pay, down from the current limit of three years'.
Still not a terrible settlement, particularly by comparison with the statutory redundancy pay cap of £11,400, but certainly a significant drop for those of long service soon to be among the 600,000 out the door.
The tragedy for civil servants is that it didn't have to be like this. One single word from Serwotka four months ago could have secured those hit by redundancy a deal twice, in some cases thrice, as generous as what is now being imposed.
In his twilight in office, Maude's predecessor Sir Gus O'Donnell strove to reform the CSCS, offering the unions a deal which, after months of negotiations, promised increased entitlements to most civil servants earning under £20,000, and a not inconsiderable £60,000 or two years' salary (whichever was the higher) as the maximum redundancy payout for those earning above £20,000.
Five of the six civil service unions agreed that these outcomes were "fair", proclaiming themselves "very pleased" that the settlement took "further account of the position of the low paid". PCS took a different tack.
Firstly there was the staggeringly dishonest strike campaign, where PCS peppered low-paid civil servants with propaganda warning terrifyingly of cuts to the redundancy pay of the lowest earners, not merely misrepresenting but wholly subverting the reality of the proposals. Those who stood to lose most were the highest earners.
PCS turned truth on its head and engineered the perversity of those earning £14,000 a year surrendering two days' pay in striking for managers on £50,000 to keep a £150,000 payoff.
Did the strikes make a difference? The poor and unemployed took a whack. But to the government, both outgoing and incoming, all the strikes showed was that PCS was a union unwilling or unable to negotiate in the real world.
Ever since Gordon Brown belatedly admitted that cuts were a-coming regardless of the colour of the next government, the CSCS was ripe for picking, and PCS should have made it its mission to hammer out a settlement. The five other civil service unions acknowledged this, and battened down the hatches before the rain came. PCS, engrossed in the myth of its own importance, chose to pick a fight, tearing up those hatches and throwing them into the howling winds.
In doing so, PCS has left its members, of which I was until recently one, exposed to the inevitability of harsher cuts than they ever imagined. If PCS had put the long-term interests of its members first, we might not have found ourselves in this situation. PCS' actions constitute a gross dereliction of duty, both to its members and to its understandably furious sister unions, whose 18 months of hard negotiating is now all for nothing.
Mark Serwotka should go."
Yes, it all sounds so familiar - particularly the bit about low paid union members being used as cannon fodder - to defend the interests of their much higher paid colleagues.
