Passport Office workers will launch a five-week strike today (Monday) in the increasingly bitter civil service dispute over jobs, pay, pensions and conditions. More than 1,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) - around a quarter of the 4,000 strong workforce - will walk out at eight sites in an escalation of the long-running row.
Picket lines will be mounted outside the offices in Glasgow, Durham, Liverpool, Southport, Peterborough, London, Belfast and Newport in Wales. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka has written to the Government calling for urgent talks in a bid to resolve the dispute.
The Home Office said the Passport Office has already processed more than 2.7 million applications this year, adding over 99.7% of standard applications are being processed within 10 weeks, with the majority of those delivered to customers well under this timescale. There are currently no plans to change official guidance which states that it takes up to 10 weeks to get a passport.
