Civil service unions Prospect and the FDA have urged their members to accept the Cabinet Office's final offer on a major shake-up of redundancy terms for officials, as the deadline looms for unions to back or reject a deal.
After months of talks with unions, the Cabinet Office last month published its planned changes to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme, which governs exit payments for staff leaving the service and which ministers have argued is unaffordable in its current state.
The government's final offer includes cuts to all three forms of civil service exit payout, as well to the tariff used to calculate them, but it rows back from some of the proposals outlined in the original Cabinet Office consultation launched in February and in public sector-wide Treasury guidance published at the same time.
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The Cabinet Office has now given unions until October 31 to accept or reject its offer, and ministers have said they will press ahead with more stringent cuts if backing from trade unions is not forthcoming.
Key unions remain divided on their response, however. The Cabinet Office made an interim offer to unions in June, and the FDA, Prospect, Unison and the Defence Police Association were permitted to continue negotiations after accepting the government's preconditions for a deal. But the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, Unite and the Prison Officers Association were excluded from further talks after refusing to accept those parameters.
"If they choose to vote to reject the proposals, it has to be on the clear understanding that the government will impose more detrimental terms" – Garry Graham, Prospect union
Prospect, which represents specialists including engineers and scientists in the civil service, has now urged its members to accept the proposals, and said its civil service sector executive (CSSEC) committee had, after "considerable debate", agreed unaminously to recommend a deal.
Calling on Prospect members to back the Cabinet Office's latest offer, Prospect's deputy general secretary Garry Graham said the union's CSSEC had not taken the decision to call for acceptance "lightly" and critisiced the "crass and high-handed" approach from ministers in vowing to press ahead with a less generous settlement if unions chose to decline its offer.
But he said there was little appetite among members for a protracted dispute.
"If they choose to vote to reject the proposals, it has to be on the clear understanding that the government will impose more detrimental terms, and the valuable protections proposed in the offer will be withdrawn.
"A sustained campaign of industrial action would be needed to seek to change the government’s position.”
He added: “We are more than willing to lead such a campaign, but based on membership feedback we are concerned that there is not an appetite for the protracted action that would be required and the loss of the improvements we have been successful in negotiating.”
"Sustained industrial action"
Meanwhile, the FDA – representing senior officials – struck a similar note, saying that while it remained "strongly opposed to the government's attacks on civil service redundancy terms" it had continued to negotiate to try and focus on "mitigating some of detrimental changes proposed and achieving improvements in the scheme where possible".
"The Cabinet Office was clear that, if rejected, the final offer would be withdrawn and the proposals outlined in June, which in the main are closer to the Treasury terms, would be implemented," the union said.
"Members would need to be prepared take sustained industrial action to have any possibility of persuading the government to make changes to the scheme" – FDA union
"In these circumstances, members would need to be prepared take sustained industrial action to have any possibility of persuading the government to make changes to the scheme, beyond those already on offer."
The FDA, which is currently holding a series of meetings with its members across government, said it believed that the "best option for members would be to recommend acceptance of the final offer, rather than see an inferior offer imposed".
Members of both the FDA and Prospect have until October 31 to cast their ballots. Graham, the Prospect deputy general secretary said a high turnout would "send an important message to the Cabinet Office as to how strongly members feel with regard to this issue".
A spokesperson for the PCS – which has already slammed the offer as a "cynical attempt to lay the ground for further job cuts on the cheap" – meanwhile confirmed that its leadership would be meeting this week to discuss a response to the offer.
A spokesperson told CSW: "From the outset, this has been an absolutely disgraceful episode. Firstly, coming so soon after the imposition of worsened terms that we were told were sustainable and affordable, and then the underhand way the Cabinet Office approached the talks showed utter contempt for civil servants.
"Our national executive is due to meet on Tuesday to discuss the offer and the responses we have had to our consultation with members."