30th March 2007

Greens condemn attacks on public services

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The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) have sent a letter with three questions to local councillors and some prospective councillors around the proposed job cuts, privatisation and pay. The PCS union represents more than 320,000 civil servants and those working in non-departmental public bodies, related areas and the private sector. The responses they collect will be distributed locally to their members prior to the election to help them make up their minds when they cast their votes.

Greens will no doubt express individual views, but below is a statement from Gloucestershire Green party spokesperson and Coordinator of Green Party Group on Stroud District Council, Cllr Philip Booth:

1. The government has proposed to cut over 100,000 civil and public service jobs. They claim these cuts will not impact service delivery to the public. But every day our members are seeing how less staff means a lesser service to the public. Where do you stand on cutting civil and public service jobs?

Philip answers: In January the Gloucestershire Green party issued a statement to the press backing PCS strike action at the Government's attempt to cut 100,000 jobs. The Green party is wholly against the massive job cuts, privatisation, office closures, worsening working conditions and lower pay - including what is effectively a pay cut in real terms for some of the lowest paid. PCS's Mark Serwotka has in the past received a standing ovation at Green party conference. The civil service is not the place for Labour to find its money to pay for war on Iraq, ID cards or the £76 billion replacement for Trident nuclear weapons. Civil service managers need to take seriously the very real concerns of membership.

2. PCS is concerned that the government has privatised more of the civil service since 1997 than the Conservative government did in 18 years. These privatisations are costly and unnecessary, and are jeopardising services being delivered to the public, often the most vulnerable in society. Where do you stand on privatising public services?

Philip answers: The Green party has continued to highlight and challenge the Government's massive, deeply divisive, costly and damaging privatisation and PFI programmes. Greens support the 'Public Services Not Private Profit' Campaign launched last year by PCS and other unions to tackle Labour's slash and burn approach to public services. Greens are the only main party supporting the national campaign, "Keep our NHS Public" and the only party in Gloucestershire to raise this issue repeatedly in the local press. The Government's own Offices of Public Reform have said we have the most efficient services in Europe: this is being destroyed by privatisation and the massive profits going to companies with little accountability. We reject privatisation, free market economics and globalisation, and want instead public ownership, worker’s rights, economic democracy, progressive taxation and the redistribution of wealth and power: the common good before corporate greed, and the public interest before private profit.


3. PCS is campaigning for a national civil service pay framework, rather then the current arrangement of over 200 separate pay negotiations. Do you support PCS’s campaign for greater pay coherence in the civil service?

Philip answers: Greens campaign for fair pay and decent conditions for all workers: in the EU Greens have paid a key role in legislation like the legal right to refuse to work for more than 48 hours in any one week. While the government has brought us the minimum wage (all be it to low) it has failed dismally to repeal Thatcher‘s anti-union laws. This is unacceptable. The government has also failed to take seriously PCS very real and pressing concerns over pay inequalities and low pay in the civil service and other bodies. We fully support PCS’s campaign for greater pay coherence and welcome the campaign to write to all councillors ahead of the May elections. We hope this will help ensure more councillors committed to ending Government cuts that are as PCS says, "ripping the heart out of our public services".

Online petition

PCS is joining the demand for public services that genuinely meet peoples' needs, and calling on the European Commission to bring forward European Legislation. Sign the petition: www.petitionpublicservice.eu

Notes:

As a background to the campaign PCS believes that government job cuts are ripping the heart out of our public services we all rely on and we are campaigning for:

o    No compulsory redundancies or relocations
o    An end to privatisation without agreement
o    An end to unfair pay
o    Adequate resources and decent working conditions
o    No cuts to the civil service compensation scheme