Workers at job centres and benefits offices across Liverpool will take 20 days of strike action next month in an escalation of a dispute over pay, jobs and conditions.
More than 100 members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) at four job centres in Liverpool - as well as at a DWP contact centre in Stockport and a benefit centre in Bolton - will stage a series of walkouts between February 9 and March 3.
Before this action begins, 100,000 PCS members working in more than 120 government departments will walk-out next Wednesday (February 1) as part of their own pay dispute.
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That same February 1 day is shaping up to be a day of major disruption, with train drivers, security guards and university staff also set to head to the picket lines.
Speaking about the job centre walk-outs, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “It’s a scandal that the Government pays its own workforce so little they have to rely on the national minimum wage uplift to get a pay rise.
"There was a time when it would have been unthinkable that civil servants would be scraping by on the minimum wage.
“That low pay blights some sectors of the civil service shows the contempt with which consecutive governments have treated their own workers, but this Government is in a position to right that wrong and give our members a deserved 10% pay rise to help them through the cost-of-living crisis and beyond.”
More than 100 PCS members at Toxteth, Liverpool Duke Street, Liverpool City and Liverpool Innovation Park Jobcentres will take action on 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27 and 28 February, and 1, 2 and 3 March.
They will be joined by almost 500 members at Stockport Contract Centre and Bolton Benefit Centre on 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 February.
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