Facility time in civil service under attack

The coalition government, prompted by the extreme right and their cronies in the so-called TaxPayers’ Alliance, are attacking the provision of time off for union reps in the civil service.

They have launched a consultation aimed at reducing the amount of paid time off given to union reps in the civil service; the consultation runs for eight weeks ending in September.

The government claims that facility time costs the civil service £36 million and states that it wants “to ensure that the civil service has in place the same controls and monitoring that the best private businesses have”. The government have offered no evidence that the existing arrangements in the civil service fall short of best practice in the private sector.

PCS, the largest union in the civil service, points out that the single most effective step to reduce waste in this aspect of the civil service would be to reverse the actions of a previous tory government which created more than 200 sets of negotiations. This arrangement is described by PCS General secretary Mark Serwotka as “incredibly wasteful”.

The government seems intent on ignoring the benefits that facility time brings.