PCS is supporting the call by shadow chancellor John McDonnell for “an emergency budget for our public services”.
- Pause and fix universal credit
- Provide new funding to lift the public sector pay cap
- Properly fund our public services including health, education, and local government
- Serious funding for infrastructure across the whole country
- Launch a large-scale public house-building programme.
This plan comes after almost 99% of our union’s public sector members, in a ballot result earlier this month, indicated they want to see the public sector pay cap end and investment in public services. 79% expressed willingness to take strike action if the government refuses.
Uncapped potential
Last week has also seen think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research’s report – Uncapped Potential – set out the economic case against the cap.
The report says the UK needs a pay rise. Real median (average) household incomes are today only 5% higher than they were in 2007 and the country is in the worst period of pay growth in 150 years. The focus of government economic policy must now be to raise pay and productivity across the entire economy, and it is critical that the public sector is not left behind.
The IPPR says that raising public sector pay stands alongside welfare reform and boosting private sector productivity and earnings through industrial strategy as a key part of the response to the country’s crisis in living standards.
Tax justice
PCS also argues that the government could easily find the extra money for tax justice following the recent exposure through the Paradise Papers of widespread legal tax avoidance by the richest and most powerful.
PCS, as the union representing staff working on Universal Credit, also supported McDonnell’s call to pause the roll-out. The widespread criticism of the benefit roll out by charities, local authorities, MPs and its own workforce needs to be taken seriously.
PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka said: “McDonnell’s proposals for a budget for public services are plain common sense against the nonsense of the chancellor’s claims that there can be no new money to end the pay cap. The emergency budget for public services is necessary because of the daily chaos of Theresa May’s government in crisis. Inflation has now risen to 3% CPI.
“Public sector workers are already thousands of pounds worse off because of pay policy. What public sector workers need is for the pay cap to be scrapped now, for above inflation pay rises to be agreed and the chancellor to guarantee the money for this in the budget. Scrapping the cap without increasing the funding to pay for it is a Tory trick that we won’t fall for.”
Keep up the pressure on the government over pay by using our pay calculator and emailing your losses to the chancellor.
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