| Around 135,000 workers from the two largest government departments are this week holding joint rolling strikes over imposed cuts. Jobcentre and benefit office staff from the Department for Work and Pensions will join tax workers from HM Revenue and Customs in a series of regional walkouts. The strikes form part of PCS’s three-month civil service-wide campaign against imposed cuts to pay, pensions, jobs and working conditions, which has involved weeks of industrial action among the union’s 250,000 public sector members since a national walkout on budget day on March 20th. The union says these two departments are at the heart of the political debate about public spending and the workers involved provide invaluable public services – with HMRC collecting and administering the taxes that fund all other public services and our welfare state that are currently being undermined by the Tory-led government. Successive years of cuts in HMRC have left the department unable to properly tackle the estimated £120 billion lost every year through tax evasion, avoidance and non-collection. And, despite high unemployment, DWP has cut 20,000 staff since May 2010 and the government is now threatening to cut even more support for people entitled to benefits. These strikes come as the union is campaigning to stop government plans to close all 281 of HMRC’s walk-in tax advice centres in the UK and divert enquiries to already overloaded jobcentres. Pilot closures of 13 enquiry centres in the north east of England starts today. The union says the closure of HMRC’s enquiry centre network will cost more than it will save and disproportionately disadvantage pensioners, people on low incomes, migrant workers and disabled people. Two weeks ago the union’s annual conference agreed to hold a fresh national civil service-wide strike towards the end of June if the government continues to refuse to negotiate. Dates will be set at a later date and co-ordinated alongside other unions where possible. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “These workers are the backbone of our country’s public services and do not deserve to be treated with contempt by ministers who are refusing to even talk to us about the cuts they are imposing. “Collecting even a fraction of the money we lose through tax dodging by wealthy individuals and organisations would make it impossible for the government to claim it has no choice but to cut billions from the welfare budget for sick, disabled and unemployed people.” |