Why our public services members are striking on Budget Day
On the day that Chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivers his Budget, thousands of Prospect members across the civil service and key public bodies will be taking strike action.
Prospect’s civil service members defend, protect, support and enhance our lives.
The Budget is taking place against a backdrop of record-breaking inflation, with the RPI measure at 13% over the last year, CPI at 10%.
The chart below shows inflation since 2010 and just how much it has risen since the start of 2022.
The Chancellor is hoping to announce that inflation will fall this year. But that doesn’t mean that high prices aren’t going away. In fact, prices will keep rising – only the rate at which they rise will be slower.
Again, the chart below shows a steep rise in the cost of living since the turn of this decade.
Public sector pay
Public sector pay awards lagging behind the increasing cost of living is nothing new. Civil servants have done particularly badly. However, with the huge rise in the cost of living mentioned above, we are now seeing a seizmic gap between inflation and civil service pay.
In fact, for the median civil servant, this equates to a massive £3,000 pay cut (against RPI). Even before the steep rise in inflation started, they’d had £8,000 wiped from their salary since 2010.
As the chart below shows, we shouldn’t be fooled by cash increases in pay. Civil servants are getting poorer.
The consequences
This is impacting recruitment, retention and service delivery across a number of civil service departments, agencies and public bodies. This crisis affects us all.
Some of our members, highly trained experts in their field, are having to get second jobs, use food banks, and some of them are telling us they can’t pay their bills and live with dignity.
Our members don’t take strike action often – this is the biggest moment of industrial action in our union in over a decade.
That shows how strong the feeling is. With a solid turnout of 72% across all branches, 80% voted for strike action, and 92% voted for action short of a strike, which will commence on Thursday 16 March, the day after the strike.
Our members have decided that they will take no more.
