UP TO 2,000 Civil Service jobs were under threat yesterday as the Government began substantial cuts in the Department for Work and Pensions.
Sir Richard Mottram, Permanent Secretary at the DWP, said that staff made redundant from social security offices and Jobcentres would be able to use the Jobcentre system to try to find new work.
Civil servants at 42 social security offices, Jobcentres and other government centres were told that their offices would close as part of a sweeping rationalisation that will see mean 30,000 people leaving the department. The DWP had previously said that it would reduce the number of benefit processing centres from 550 to 81, but had said that this would not mean the closure of frontline offices.
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the main Civil Service union the PCS, said that the union would step up its campaign against the 104,000 cuts planned across the Civil Service by the Chancellor.
The union has already announced a ballot for a national strike on November 5 and Mr Serwotka said yesterday that he would ask all other union leaders to do what they can to lend support. Mr Serwotka said: “At the beginning of the week, our announcement that we would ballot over 290,000 members for a one-day strike over plans to cut jobs was branded as premature by the Government. Yet four days later we see services helping some of the most vulnerable in society slashed and we see offices helping people into work in some of the poorest communities closed.”
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Alan Johnson, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said: “Benefit processing work will be moved to a smaller number of Jobcentre Plus sites, which means that 37 sites will cease to be viable and will close altogether as a direct consequence of centralisation. We are continuing to press ahead with our wider plans for rolling out the Jobcentre Plus network across the country by 2006.”
Social security offices and Jobcentres will be affected in most areas of Britain except London. The PCS said that the closures would just be the start of a wider programme of shutdowns and that service would inevitably suffer.
The TUC voted this week to back the union’s campaign against job cuts, with measures including industrial action.
Although secondary action is illegal, unions could time strikes about other issues to coincide with walkouts by the PCS.