Civil Service cuts cost more than jobs

A damning article about the cost of cutting civil servants appeared in The Times which claimed that £800 million was spent by the Government using "consultants" and temporary staff last year. This after a lengthy programme cutting the actual numbers of established and trained staff.

The pay of some of these people is as much as a £1000 a day, almost as much as many low paid (full time!) civil servants earn in a month. This at a time of austerity launched by the coalition Government under the banal slogan "we are all in it together".

Actually we are far from all "being in it together". Its' not often I find myself in agreement with the PCS General Secretary  Mark Serwotka, but it is difficult to argue with his statement that:

"Behind these figures for redundancies are thousands of stories of individuals who have lost their jobs and are counting the cost of this government's political obsession with austerity.

"The fact that millions is still being spent on consultants shows there is work to do and that these cuts are completely unnecessary

The Government severely cut the redundancy payments made to civil servants to make it cheaper to get rid of them early on in the current parliament. The total amount spent on redundancies is £287 million. The sums spent don't add up to a jot of common sense.

The well paid remain so whilst ordinary working people pay the real costs of the economic crisis.

There is more to come to. The Government is preparing the pathway to further privatisation. A recent e-mail from Steve Cawkwell, the PCS DWP Group Secretary warned us that:

The government is proposing to privatise Shared Services across the civil service and for arms length bodies.

Shared services include services, such as payroll. This means that as a civil servant, your personal details will be in the hands of the highest bidder and subject to the need for private profit rather than public service.

This situation is made worse by the fact that the Cabinet Office has confirmed that there is a strong possibility that the work will be off-shored.

Stop these attacks on our jobs.

As part of the campaign to stop the privatisation, please go to the link here:

http://action.pcs.org.uk/page/speakout/save-our-shared-services 

and send the pre-written campaign email to your MP urging them to contact Francis Maude MP, Cabinet Office Minister, and challenge his plans.