More than 130,000 United Kingdom Public Servants have gone on a one-day strike over pay, pensions, redundancy terms, and job security.
The Government says pay rises would be limited to between 4.5 and five per cent, which the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) has called an insult.
General Secretary of the PCS, Mark Serwotka said the Government seemed to have singled out its own workforce for the worst treatment of anybody in the public sector or across the British economy.
“Government employees were given only a two per cent pay increase last year, the lowest among all public sector workers,” Mr Serwotka said.
“They are the only workers the Government is refusing to negotiate with and are the only part of the public sector who have not been offered any backdated pay award or lump sum to compensate for the chronic cost-of-living crisis.”
PCS union members have been engaged in a series of strikes for several months, demanding a pay rise of 10 per cent, along with improved pension benefits, job security, and the preservation of redundancy terms without any cuts.
Meanwhile, the Government has continued its policy of blacklisting academics from giving talks to Public Servants if they have previously criticised Government policy on social media.
Recent blacklisting of experts is reportedly the result of Cabinet Office rules introduced in 2022 that require the social media accounts of speakers to be vetted.
Kate Devlin, a reader in artificial intelligence and society at King’s College London, was invited to give a talk, but her appearance was blocked because she was judged to have made critical comments.
Despite her talk being on a different topic to the social media posts that were deemed to be critical, Dr Devlin (pictured) was informed that officials “would not sign off on speakers who had any social media content (however historic) which was negative of the Government in any way”.
London, 2 May 2023
