| Local union representatives said up to 90% of their members took action, a level of support they said would be felt in the city’s pension centre, job centres and the HMRC tax office.
However, the Government claimed support for the strike was no more than 15% across the country and described the impact of the two-day strike as “limited”.
A spokesman said 83,000 civil service workers took part in the walkout, a figure that was “quite a bit less than in previous Public and Commercial Services Union strikes.”
He added, “It’s not the case that a quarter of a million PCS members were on strike. That’s just not true.”
In Dundee, however, pensions centre branch secretary Phil Reilly said support for the second day of the dispute in his department remained solid and mirrored the estimated 70% backing of the first 24 hours.
He said, “We know the pension centre had to close early yesterday and there would have been a lot of phone calls going unanswered.
“If two-thirds of your staff don’t turn up then that’s going to have an adverse effect. We’re hoping the message gets through to management that we mean business.”
At the centre of the dispute is a Government plan to remove redundancy payment guarantees from a long-established scheme — a move the union believes could lead to staff receiving as much as a third less in redundancy payments.
The PCS union claims the Government intends to save £500 million across the civil service but says this can only be done through large scale job cuts — and the aim of the new scheme, due to come into force on April 1 — is simply to make it cheaper and easier to shed jobs.
Mr Reilly said the union had another meeting scheduled for tomorrow and the Government had until then to get back to the negotiating table.
He added, “If not, there’s further action planned later in the month. There is a judicial review at a national level going to the courts. We have to apply maximum pressure.”
The PCS’s local HMRC official, Steve Ferrier, claimed 90% support for the second day of action and said the Dundee office was only able to provide an “extremely limited service to the public”.
He added, “The response we get in disputes is always quite consistent and 90% is about the level we expected. Our members are extremely angry.”
The Department for Work and Pensions said all job centres remained open yesterday and it was expected that the situation would be the same today.
The Government spokesman said, “This deal is going to come into effect on April 1. It’s a generous deal compared with the private sector.
“It’s important to stress that compulsory redundancies are and will remain a last resort. Saving money is an important element (of the deal) but so, too, is modernising the terms under which civil servants work.” |
