PUBLIC and Commercial Services Union (PCS) general secretary Mark Serwotka confirmed yesterday that the PCS is in talks with other trade unions on holding a general strike against the coalition’s austerity cuts.
The PCS has already staged walkouts as part of a three-month campaign of industrial action over pay, jobs and working conditions and is the fifth-largest trade union in the UK with 270,000 members.
Serwotka said: ‘We are definitely having a discussion about generalised strike action.
‘More imminently than that we are having the beginnings of a much more detailed discussion between unions who have real industrial issues in front of them now about co-ordinating their efforts.’
Unite, the UK’s largest union with 1.4 million members, has submitted documents to the TUC union calling for a 24-hour general strike against the government’s spending cuts.
The proposal will be discussed at the next TUC General Council meeting on 24 April.
Serwotka added: ‘My own opinion is that what the government is doing is getting so increasingly unpopular that even a 24-hour strike involving millions of people across the economy would be an incredibly important moment.
‘It would show that people can fight back and say we don’t just have to accept our lot.’
He was speaking ahead of a half-day strike of up to 55,000 Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union members in HM Revenue and Customs this morning.
The strike will disrupt the start of the new tax year and the introduction of PAYE real time information, said the PCS yesterday.
There will be picket lines at workplaces around the UK – including call centres, processing offices and the face-to-face enquiry centres the government plans to close, generally from around 7am to 10am, and many offices will hold ‘walk-ins’ at 1pm so staff all go back to work together in a show of solidarity.
The strike follows a very solidly supported walkout by PCS members in other government departments on Friday and is part of a three-month campaign over cuts to pay, pensions and conditions, which started with a national strike on budget day on 20 March.
A 24-hour strike in the Home Office and former UK Border Agency, planned for today but postponed after a legal challenge, will now be escalated to a week-long series of walkouts across various parts of the department in a fortnight’s time.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: ‘Civil and public servants are working harder than ever to provide the services we all rely on but, instead of rewarding them, the government is imposing cuts to their pay, raiding their pensions and trying to rip up their basic working conditions.’
Serwotka and PCS president Janice Godrich have congratulated the tens of thousands of members who walked out on Friday,, describing the action as, ‘a tremendous success’ that resulted in ‘major disruption across the country.’
