To now be terrified of losing my job on top of everything else (Civil Service Cuts)

[Themidnightpig]

Like many families we are feeling the pinch of the cost of living crisis. Our fuel and food prices have gone insane and I'm currently only getting maternity pay.

I'm just returning to work from mat leave amid all the news about the cuts of 90,000 civil servants and now I'm feeling utterly terrified that I will be one of them.

AIBU to think this is a terribly irresponsible thing for the government to be doing when we are at the beginning of what's promised to be one of the worst economic crises ever? I feel sick frankly.

I understand your worries but, in the nicest possible way, those of us in the private sector live under this possibility all the time. Any company could go bust, be sold, relocate and there is nothing the employees can do about it. I’ve always worked in the private sector. I’ve been made redundant 4 times in my working life so far. And I’ve survived.

You’d have thought so ….. but ‘Defence’ covers the 3 commands of Air, Army & Navy, the joint Strategic Command, nuclear, support agencies such as DE&S. (And we also had a space command long before Trump made his own Space Force - or rejiggered and change the badges of USAF space command)
They all consist of regular & reserves, civil service, short term consultants, contractors , sub contractors and more

The target revolves :
1)big army/navy/Air Force is too expensive (at least the Army was in the middle of this recently)
so take routine UK tasks from the regulars and get civilians to do it.
2)Theres far too many of those pesky Whitehall civil servants (let’s cut them by 90,000)
3)But we still want the work doing so contractorise them
4)How much does it cost to call out a contractor at midnight ? Shocking, let’s use a soldier because they are paid 24 hours a day ….
and repeat

Currently MoD Army are in both 1 & 2 right now

Redundancy / VERS didn’t go too well - it cost money to get rid of people and was followed by recruiting people

Its not certain what routes will be taken, with talk about natural wastage, not extending fixed term (they shouldn’t have been fixed term in the first place if the intent is to extend) not filling vacancies etc

Its not unreasonable to be worried, but those of us who have been around have seen it all before

I’m verging on the point of watching for VERS announcements. But that is still just a tweak of my retirement package
(Note that if VERS gets offered do look carefully and consider your departments prospects - you would think that compulsory redundancy pays more than voluntary …. Not necessarily so as the rules were changed allowing it to be lower on the basis that a ‘better’ voluntary deal has been offered)
If there are going to be any VERS or redundancy’s then watch for any proposals to change the rules

The VERS / redundancy terms that existed when I joined would be very attractive with 40 years service, but the rules were changed years ago prior to one of the VERS offers.

If I take a voluntary VERS then it’s now capped at 21 years, and compulsory is capped at 12 years

www.civilservicepensionscheme.org.uk/media/txmh0d2u/cscs-key-facts-and-q-and-a-document-october-2017.pdf

In the Civil Service they will be having a recruitment freeze so as people retire they won't hire replacement. A few will no doubt be begging for early retirement as CD has a very very generous package and some temp will go on fixed term contracts and any others will sit in redeployment pool and be moved into other jobs. If you have a permanent job you will be fine. As usual the ones sat in jobs with great skills will be allowed to go then they can't recruit replacement then once hiring resumes they will have to pay a lot to attract suitably qualified people in.

Yes agreed, have worked in private myself and survived two rounds of reduncies but although it was an uncertain time I didnt feel as anxious as I do now.

I suppose its partially having a family yo support now and partially the scale - in private it was only a handful of people being let go so they found new jobs easily enough. The numbers seem huge!