THE Tory-led coalition is rushing through parliamentary legislation to impose on the Civil Service trade unions savage changes to their redundancy agreement (Civil Service Compensation Agreement), which the unions have not agreed to, and which will slash redundancy pay by two thirds, just literally months before the coalition sacks tens of thousands of civil servants.
The reason for the parliamentary action, which is the action of a dictatorship, is that the Court of Appeal ruled last May that the Labour government was acting illegally when it attempted to impose its own changes to the redundancy agreement, to replace the present agreement that it had freely negotiated, and which had the full agreement of the civil service trade unions.
The fact is that the new agreement will not be an ‘agreement’ at all, but a Cameron-Maude-Clegg coalition diktat, imposed by a government that is already organising to prevent a dissolution of the House of Commons, and a general election, unless 66 per cent of MPs agree to it.
The coalition is essentially seeking to get the agreement of the House of Commons for a procedure of imposition, which the Court of Appeal has already judged to be illegal.
The fact that the House of Commons may be dragooned into supporting an illegal action, does not make the action in any way legal, or any more acceptable to the trade unions – it just involves the House of Commons in the crime.
The PCS union warned yesterday that the legality of the coalition’s plans could be challenged in parliament and the courts.
Following legal advice, the union is urging MPs to question the validity of the ‘money bill’ laid in parliament yesterday by Cabinet Office minister and boss of the Star Chamber, Francis Maude.
Plans to cut the accrued rights of existing civil and public servants could also be challenged on human rights grounds, the union believes.
The High Court has ruled twice in the PCS’ favour that the previous government acted unlawfully when it tried to cut redundancy terms without the union’s agreement.
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: ‘We will be studying the proposed legislation in detail, but our advice suggests the government might be repeating the mistakes of the previous administration in acting outside the law, simply to make it easier and cheaper to cuts tens of thousands of jobs.
‘We fundamentally reject the need for these cuts and, as well as challenging them in parliament and the courts if necessary, we will pursue every avenue to oppose them in towns and cities across the UK.’
The PCS leadership is to be congratulated for carrying forward the struggle to defend their members redundancy agreement from the attacks of both Labour and Tory governments.
It is a disgrace that the leaders of the five other civil service trade unions were willing to make a deal with Labour and give up their members’ redundancy pay.
The members of these five civil service trade unions, the POA, Unite, the FDA, the GMB and Prospect must tell their leaders to make a common front with the PCS to take the struggle forward.
Those leaders who are not prepared to do so must resign and make way for those who are willing to defend the gains that civil servants have made.
A public sector alliance must be formed that will take this struggle right into the TUC General Council, for that body to adopt a policy to call a general strike if parliament passes legislation to impose a new redundancy agreement onto the civil servants trade unions.
Further the TUC must take the initiative to form councils of action in all areas to mobilise all of the people to defend themselves against the savage cuts that the coalition is bent on imposing.
The policy must be to bring down the coalition and bring in a workers government and socialism.