Tax workers to stage rolling strikes against job cuts
25 Jun 2014 02:37 PM
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.