Civil servants - will you be striking on 1st Feb?

[Iamnotausername]

I know you probably can't say what dept you are in but will you be striking?

I will.

Oh dear. You know what they say about assuming.

I pretty obviously didn’t say that. 😂

You don't appear to be able to make any points without totally misrepresenting what people are saying. It's quite surreal, and makes for bizarre reading.

Agree that the current government has been openly hostile and has effectively spent its time in office slagging off the CS. It's appalling behaviour, and civil servants are unable to comment to correct the lies being told.

JRM is odious beyond belief.

Ill-founded and illogical you can have – I don’t agree, but that’s subjective – but I’m not being disingenuous or self-interested. Supporting striking workers doesn’t benefit me directly. I do it because a) I care about the well-being of others, b) the right to withdraw labour is essential and c) I believe a society in which wealth is distributed more fairly will be better for everyone.

(As an aside, I suppose in that sense it benefits me, but it’s a pretty long game to be playing…)

Most people are capable of caring about things even if they aren’t directly affected by them.

I think you might be giving that poster too much credit @peachgreen. The repeated misrepresentation of what people are saying makes them look pretty goady imo....

That said, there have been some interesting posts on this thread by others, so it's been worth the reading.

Same, to all of that.

My department didn’t reach the threshold 😞 but would definitely strike and hope we’ll get balloted again.

My department is (although heard very little, my organisation striking wouldn't really hit the public much but could cause chaos within the CS but tbh it's already pretty chaotic....), you don't have to be in a union to strike by the way.

I won't be striking, on the whole I'm not too dissatisfied with the salary (and certainly not the pension) my biggest frustration with the CS which no one seems to give a shit about addressing is the lack of pay progression within a scale. I think people would be much happier with their salaries, and there wouldn't be such high turnover, if you were allowed to progress up your scale like you can in most other sectors. It should pay to build knowledge and experience in a role. I'm now seeking my 3rd promotion in 3 years, it is an absolute pain in the arse for my employers, I don't think it's as good for my personal development and ability in what I give back to the CS, but it's the only way I can get paid more which is important to me right now in this climate with a young family.

If they did a strike specifically on that, I'd be all over it!

I think people would be much happier with their salaries, and there wouldn't be such high turnover, if you were allowed to progress up your scale like you can in most other sectors. It should pay to build knowledge and experience in a role.

Agree with this.

Iamthewombat what an odd person you are. I'm not sure what you're getting out of this thread. You clearly have it in for Civil Servants for some reason 🤣

Sorry to be pedantic but DWP staff won’t be processing their own UC claims. If they are- then they’ll be sacked. It’s a major gross misconduct offence.

True, if we even look at our own/ a colleague’s UC claim it gets flagged. Massive no no.

Is Iamthewombat JRM in a rubbish disguise?

The people building the systems are very seldom the same people who maintain the systems when they are built. I’m not sure what point you are attempting to make. You think that the public sector should recruit and retain very expensive systems architects and software engineers who wouldn’t want to do the maintenance after the system has been built?

Big systems builds and implementations are done by third party businesses anyway, not by individual contractors.

And yet you diverge from the subject of the thread to do heavy handed virtue signalling, to show what a good person you are. Is that because you know that you can’t answer the question about why civil servants haven’t flocked wholesale to the specialist roles in your field? That’s the surreal thing.

No, I don’t ‘have it in for civil servants’. Nor am I Jacob Rees Mogg, haha. I assume that is who ‘JRM’ is?

What I’m ‘getting out of the thread’ is debating civil servants’ decision to strike. Which affects the public, including me. They wouldn’t be striking unless it didn’t affect the public, right? This is a public forum.

Predictably, as soon as any difficult questions are asked, the thread veers off into a pity party or preaching.

Example: I asked precisely what the pension complaint underpinning the strike action was. Nobody knew, least of all the posters planning to strike over it. One poster linked to a pensions website that you had to subscribe to, after which I had to find out for myself what the McCloud remedy is and the context.

Example 2: somebody moans that her ‘DP’ doesn’t get paid enough. In her opinion, and his, his job is harder than hers (she’s known him for three months, it transpires, and has never done his job, but never mind). She earns much more, and thinks that this constitutes enough evidence to claim that strikes are justified and that civil servants would be paid much more if they worked in the private sector.

Example 3: somebody else chimes in to say that in her specialist field, salaries are 30% to 40% higher in the private sector. Hence the strikes are justified and civil servants are underpaid. Why haven’t they all moved to the private sector then, she is asked? She has no answer but launches into a preaching session about her opposition to ‘the gig economy and shitty menial jobs’. What’s that got to do with the civil service? It’s a distraction tactic.

I’m sure that there are all kinds of reasons for civil servants to be unhappy with their lot, but none of them have been well articulated on this thread.

*they wouldn’t be striking unless it affected the public.

The pension overpayment issue is actually fairly important, last time I checked the calculator, which was months ago, it was a fairly decent chunk of my (low) salary. They're now saying that that money is needed to implement the mccloud judgement, but this was months and months after the valuation. The mccloud judgement was needed because the way that employees were moved to the new scheme was age discrimination, as it was handled differently depending on how close to pension age you were.

It's probably important to note that this judgement covers a HUGE number of public servants. Doctors, teachers, obviously fire fighters and judges. Does that make it more palitable?

I agree, all these complaints of being de facto below minimum wage due to unpaid overtime - just refuse en masse to do it. No loss of pay in the process.

You're manipulating responses.

Come and work with me for a while. You would need full security clearance, level 7 qualifications (MA or above) and at least 5 years experience working face to face, frontline. Then 6-9 months of training including exams. This is for my job.

You will be taking a pay cut to join but hey it's CS, it's going to be ok. You will have teams with a 40% rolling vacancy rate and you won't be able to keep hold of your AA or AO staff as they leave due to being overworked and can find better pay in the private sector. You have to train them up to do the job so resources are always removed to have a permanent training system in place.

Your IT system is overwhelming, based on a cheap 25year old platform that's not fit for purpose but it was the cheapest available so the government bought it. It will go offline continually for a few minutes at a time for at least 30mins every day, you will repeatedly lose your work and have to redo. It crash for over a day every month, you will have to make this lost time up. You fail to meet the increasing targets in place your placed on productivity disciplinary action therefore you continually work additional hours, which aren't recognised, and see targets increasing year on year. You will have staff off on long term sickness because of burn out. They will never come back but will remain on sickleave until they find another job. You cannot replace them until they've left.

You're take home wage is now lower than you started on and no you won't be getting paid anymore but yes you will be covering your ex colleagues job because they've left and another is on sick leave. You can ask for help again and again but replacements are virtually impossible to find and take a minimum of 6 months to train.

You will be looking for another job. You will be ideal for the CS Iamwombat because you'll think all the above is just your colleagues whinging. You will obviously decline any wage increase offered due to your colleagues strike action because it was perfectly acceptable before.

No, I won’t be

“You fail to meet the increasing targets in place your placed on productivity disciplinary action therefore you continually work additional hours, which aren't recognised, and see targets increasing year on year. You will have staff off on long term sickness because of burn out. They will never come back but will remain on sickleave until they find another job. You cannot replace them until they've left.”

And this is what a union should be for. To stop the target increase. To stop the productivity disciplinary action. To stop the extra hours. That’s bring down the burn out rate.

They should also be involved in a fair process for removing people on sick leave, so replacements can be made, but I doubt you’ll find a union willing to do that! Despite the knock on effect to their members in work.

All members work to rule, without even demanding a pay increase. No unpaid overtime. Let the services collapse. No pissing about with one day strikes that are just the same as you losing the system to a crash for a day - that is, just more pressure to make up the lost time.

This is a rare workers market ahead of recession. Now is the time to work contracted hours only - and the let the union be very clear its PR on why you can’t get a driving licence application through (or whatever service it is).

@Iamthewombat Your misrepresentation of other people’s posts (and complete fabrication of the facts in some places!) is really quite something.

a) DP and I have been together for 6 months, not 3. Actually it’s almost 8 months at this stage, to be entirely accurate. I’ve known him for quite a bit longer.
b) He’s also not the only civil servant in my life.
c) My previous private sector job was consulting, specifically for local and UK Government, so I worked closely with civil servants for 6 years. Long enough to see that in general, certainly at lower and mid-level, there was a lot more expected of them in terms of output and responsibility relative to their remuneration than in my experience of the private sector.
d) This experience leads me to conclude that striking is justified, as well as my belief that it’s important to support striking workers as a matter of principle because withdrawal of labour is a basic human right.

Oh well, that extra three months makes ALL the difference.

Can’t you see the flaws in your own argument? Clearly not. I’ll point out the most egregious. You say, above, that “…it’s important to support striking workers as a matter of principle because withdrawal of labour is a basic human right.”

In other words, you would support any strike because in your view, striking is a human right. You’ve forgotten that the subject of this thread is one particular strike: the proposed strike by civil servants. Which rather detracts from your attempts to claim that you have an in-depth understanding of your boyfriend’s job, and the jobs of many other civil servants and thus can claim without fear of contradiction that the civil service are mistreated enough to strike.

Incidentally, you should stop tagging me in your posts, like a teenager trying to start a fight. Have some dignity.

Are you quite well? Your posts are increasingly rambling. You’re the one who was complaining about people more senior than you being paid more than you, right? And who executed the reverse ferret on the pension question: one minute it was a diabolical liberty that made a strike inevitable, then the next, when you couldn’t explain what the problem with pensions was, you said that it wasn’t fundamental to your current dismay.

I’ve been a senior civil servant. I was well paid, and had great pension, which even at comparatively high contribution rates was a fantastic bargain. The holidays were great and the pressure was less than the private sector. I still moved back to the private sector. That’s because, despite having some excellent, motivated and clever colleagues, I got fed up of the endless moaning and inertia from the majority. As do many people who join the civil service. Any young people who join at AA or AO and leave are leaving for the same reason, not because the package is poor. They may also recognise that once you’ve been in the public sector for more than a few years, it’s incredibly hard to get out.