Prospect ‘How To’ Guide To Crossing Picket Lines
Posted on March 8, 2010
Last week, the Prospect trade union circulated a memo to all its members in the Civil Service, advising members to cross PCS picket lines during industrial action over changes to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme:
Working with four other unions, FDA, Unite, GMB and POA, Prospect has come to an agreement on the final changes to the scheme. Prospect members will therefore not be taking industrial action. There may be picket lines at your place of work on each of these days and for any subsequent action. It should be noted that PCS pickets at any place of work will be aimed at PCS grades and are not intended to prevent Prospect members from attending work on these days [...] This means that any Prospect members who decided not to cross a picket line would be in an individually vulnerable position, and in law we cannot advise members to take such action.
This does nothing to negate the PCS hierarchy’s own appalling economism and narrow self-interest. Members of the hierarchy are only interested in safeguarding their own comfortable permananet civil service jobs, cozying up to the bosses and ‘cutting’ little deals with them. Some delegates are uninterested in agency workers and actively discourage them from joining the union.
New Labour has failed to repeal the Tories’ anti-union legislation, but in the event of a Tory government after the May election, the position of workers will deteriorate even further, with attacks on workers’ terms and conditions of employment increasing, as the Tories, with their Victorian workhouse mentality, seek to make the workers pay for the economic and social devastation which are the fruits of Tory policies last time they were in government.
