| Members of the Public and Commercial Services Union walked off the job for the third time this year as the long-running dispute continued.
Picket lines were established at Dundee’s main JobCentre Plus in Gellatly Street and outside the DWP contact centre in Ward Road.
PCS Tayside branch Secretary Ali Arnott said today’s strike had been supported by around 350 members across the region and frontline services had been hit.
He said, “The JobcentrePlus offices in Dundee and Tayside will be delivering a very limited service, as will Jobcentre Plus in Arbroath and Perth, and the telephone section of the Bereavement Benefit Centre in Arbroath will also be reduced.
“In Tayside we have an approximate membership of about 500 people and about 70% are out on strike.
“We hope the action will bring the employers back to the table to come up with an improved offer.”
A DWP spokesperson said no offices in the Tayside area had been closed as a result of the strike, but agreed that some services to the public were affected by the industrial action.
Union leaders in Fife said they were delighted with the response shown by the vast majority of the union’s 650 local members, with members outside Kirkcaldy’s CSA office, in particular, looking to send a message to Prime Minister Gordon Brown in his own constituency.
Steve West, campaign co-ordinator at PCS Fife, said, “Gordon Brown is our MP and he is the man with the power to change this.
“We’re looking to send a clear message out to him that we can’t afford to live as it is without this ridiculous pay offer.
“Some of our workers are only on 24p above the minimum wage and we’re extremely angry about this.
“We’re getting angrier as our bills go up, our mortgages go up and our food and fuel costs are spiralling. Something has to be done.”
Mr West added that job centres in Kirkcaldy, Cowdenbeath, Dunfermline, Glenrothes, Cupar and St Andrews had also been severely affected.
Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, said, “The Government’s policy to peg public sector pay to below inflation is embedding a culture of low pay across civil and public services with a quarter of the civil service earning under £16,000.
“It is scandalous that coastguard watch assistants who save lives, along with their colleagues in the rest of the civil service who deliver essential services, should be paid just above the minimum wage.
“The Government’s argument that paying public and civil servants a decent wage fuels inflation is disingenuous and discredited.”
Coastguards were meeting at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, where they were urging MSPs to back a petition calling for fairer pay rates.
More than 10,000 civil servants in Scotland and 100.000 across the UK were on strike. |
