Today the largest Government Department, DWP announced one of the lowest pay offers in the civil service for its 90k employees, 43k of which are PCS members.

Below we take a look at some of the details of the offer and why DWP PCS members should now Vote NO to continue the dispute.

1) Most DWP staff, including many on the National Minimum Wage, will be getting the absolute minimum afforded by the Cabinet Office remit: 4.5%. So much for the leadership’s suggestion that delegated bargaining units would be able to maximise payments from the treasury’s remit.

2) The very lowest paid will receive between 4.5 and 6.25% but this will only keep their salaries millimetres above the National minimum wage until next April. So much for the unions demand of 10% and more specifically of a minimum underpin of £15/hr.

3) Thousands of staff in London at the most numerous EO grade will get 0.42% less than nationally. Is it cheaper to live in London?

4) Thousands nationally will be getting an insulting £80 non-consolidated bonus. Much of which will be eaten by tax.

Compared to other departments this is one of, if not the lowest pay impositions in government for workers who keep the UK welfare system running and who continued to do so throughout the pandemic.

The strikingly low-pay being imposed on these key workers is equalled by the strikingly tone-deaf response of the PCS leadership.

In the ongoing consultative ballot, the leadership is asking these members, many on the minimum wage, many using foodbanks and claiming in-work benefits, to give up the fight by agreeing to continue to suspend industrial leverage and strike action on the basis of the continuation of poverty pay in DWP.

Despite the leadership claims that negotiators could perform alchemy with the 4.5% remit, we said it was impossible to make the 4.5% go further than 4.5% and we take no delight in being proven right.

The suspension of re-ballots and strike action over the past 3 months has left DWP members neutered and naked in negotiations and the employer has done exactly what it said it would do – impose the worse pay settlement in the public sector on some of the lowest paid civil servants.

In the meantime, the union leadership has purposefully delayed, suspended and equivocated, leaving the momentum and purpose of the national campaign dead in the water.

But there is hope.

We are urging members to vote against:

• The NEC in its pseudo ballot consultation by returning a resounding ‘NO’ to their strategy to end the dispute.
• The leadership’s candidates for General Secretary (Fran Heathcote) and Assistant General Secretary (Paul O’Connor) later this year.
• Vote to remove the NEC majority in next year’s NEC elections.

Branches are being organised through the Branches Say No campaign. Go to its website and discuss in your branch the statement, contact the campaign to say you will support it, and make use of the materials to agitate for a reject vote. Also follow the PCS Say No twitter account.

DWP members must VOTE NO if we’re going to defeat poverty pay.