The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) is to launch a legal challenge over changes to the civil service redundancy scheme, as its members voted overwhelmingly to reject the reforms.
PCS will go to the High Court this week in the row over the cuts, which cap the payouts to civil servants at 21 months’ pay for a voluntary redundancy and 12 months for a compulsory redundancy.
It said that 90 per cent of the union’s 80,000 members rejected the change in a ballot result revealed today.
The union will claim that the government is breaching the European convention on human rights in reducing contractual obligations on redundancy. It is calling for a judicial review and saying that the government should re-open negotiations with unions.
Other civil service unions have accepted the move, but the PCS has the largest number of members within central government.
The government assetrs that changing the redundancy terms is an essential cost-saving measure at a time when wholesale spending cuts are needed to reduce the deficit.
The difficulty facing trade unions is the economics of it all. Often the terms of redundancy are so superior to those in the private sector that they are in danger of appearing greedy.
Justin Patten, Solicitor