Public and Commercial Services Union
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Tax workers to stage rolling strikes against job cuts

Tens of thousands of tax workers will hold rolling strikes across the UK in a dispute over job cuts.  Walkouts will affect HM Revenue and Customs offices every day this week as the union bids to halt the cuts and persuade senior officials to work with the union to develop a robust case to government for a fully resourced department. 

Tens of thousands of tax workers will hold rolling strikes across the UK in a dispute over job cuts.  Walkouts will affect HM Revenue and Customs offices every day this week as the union bids to halt the cuts and persuade senior officials to work with the union to develop a robust case to government for a fully resourced department.

The strikes come as the union is holding a national consultative ballot of all its quarter of a million civil and public service members with a view to taking part in joint union industrial action over pay, expected to start in July.

In HMRC, years of successive job cuts have left the organisation unable to cope, with delays on telephone lines continuing, huge backlogs of post and private debt collectors being brought in to chase up tax credits overpayments.

As well as cutting thousands more jobs, HMRC is continuing to close more of its offices – including all 281 walk-in tax enquiry centre, with a further 23 large sites across the UK facing imminent closure – and is planning to privatise more of its debt collection and post handling.

The department is making more than 2,000 fixed-term workers compulsorily redundant despite its own business planning revealing a huge staffing shortfall.

Central to the dispute is also the imposition of a discredited and widely unpopular performance management system that places an arbitrary 10% of staff each year at risk of disciplinary procedures and the sack.

Strikes will be:

•Wednesday 25 June: London and the south east, and south west England

•Thursday 26 June: Midlands and Northern Ireland

•Friday 27 June: North west England and Wales

 

The union is also considering other shorter duration walkouts and "good work strikes" to highlight the gaps in services, as well as other forms of industrial action such as a ban on overtime being used to mask staff shortages and refusal to assist plans to shift almost 2,000 staff to cover tax credits enquiry lines. Many of the staff being moved over would normally work on tacking tax avoidance and evasion.

Channel website: http://www.pcs.org.uk

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