Passport Office workers in Durham will launch a five-week strike on Monday in an increasingly bitter dispute over jobs, pay, pensions and conditions.
HM Passport Office on Freeman's Place in Durham is one of eight sites across the UK where workers will walk out in an escalation of the long-running row. More than 1,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) are walking out, with picket lines also mounted in Glasgow, Liverpool, Southport, Peterborough, London, Belfast and Newport in Wales.
The union said that a strike fund has been put in place to support those taking action. Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, has written to the Government calling for urgent talks in a bid to resolve the dispute.
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He has accused ministers of treating its own employees differently to others in the public sector after negotiations were held with unions who represent health workers and teachers. The union is stepping up strikes, with a nationwide walkout of more than 130,000 civil servants planned for April 28.
The Home Office said the Passport Office has already processed more than 2.7m applications this year, adding that more than 99.7% of standard applications are processed within ten weeks, with the majority of those delivered to customers well under this timescale. There are no plans to change the current official guidance that states it takes up to ten weeks to get a passport.
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