Tens of thousands of public sector workers will strike on 15 March and work to rule indefinitely after voting overwhelmingly for industrial action.
At least 80% of Prospect union members – who work for organisations such as the Met Office, Health and Safety Executive and Natural England – voted for strike action and 92% were in favour of action short of a strike, on a turnout of 72%, well over the legal threshold of 50%.
Their action on 15 March, which is budget day, is likely to coincide with a strike by PCS union members in the civil service and other public sector workers, taking the number of civil servants participating in industrial action that day to more than 100,000.
Teachers represented by the National Education Union (NEU), junior doctors in England represented by the British Medical Association (BMA) and London Underground drivers represented by Aslef are also set to strike that day.
It comes after a wave of strikes over the winter in the public and private sector with many workers protesting against real-terms pay cuts at a time when inflation has been running in double digits.
Prospect members are taking action in relation to pay, the threat of job losses and proposed cuts to redundancy terms, and the strike constitutes the union’s largest industrial action in more than a decade.
Mike Clancy, the general secretary of Prospect, said his union’s members in the public sector had seen their incomes decline by up to 26% over the past 13 years and that their work had been “taken for granted” and they had “had enough”.
“Poor pay and declining morale represent an existential threat to the civil service’s ability to function, and to our ability to regulate and deliver on the government’s priorities,” he said. “Bills are rocketing and pay is falling ever further behind the private sector, leaving our members with no option but to take industrial action.
“We will continue our campaign until the government comes up with a meaningful offer. If it doesn’t do so soon, we may be left with no civil service to protect.”
In January, the PCS, Prospect and FDA unions were invited to talks by Jeremy Quin, the paymaster general and Cabinet Office minister, after the government appeared to take a more conciliatory approach towards entering talks to avert strikes within the civil service.
However, the unions warned that the government needed to come up with a meaningful offer on pay and conditions if it wanted to avoid industrial action, and no more cash has been forthcoming.
The government has urged public sector unions to suspend planned industrial action in return for talks about “fair and affordable” settlements for the next financial year, but this has been rejected as a “hollow” request.
After that, the PCS union proceeded with a rolling timetable of strikes, with 100,000 members in 214 government departments taking action on specific days in February and March. FDA members on the government fast-stream for graduates have also voted for industrial action.
