Nothing to lose

I don’t know how true this is, but my old trade union, PCS, claims today that 27,000 staff in my old civil service department, the DWP, are currently paid £9.93 an hour. From 1st April 2023, this figure will rise to £10.42. This is not a case of the government being generous. They have to raise the hourly rate because it’s the law. Put simply, 27,000 people, who are responsible for paying benefits to the poorest people in the land, are on the minimum wage, or the national living wage which the government laughably calls it. Is it any wonder that some of these people voted to go on strike for better wages?

Previously, I doubted the claim that many DWP offices operate food banks and breakfast clubs for their staff. How wrong was I? There’s no doubt at all and some of them exist in Bristol. Now, I’m a bit biased having worked for nearly 40 years in that department, lacking the skills and ability to do anything else it must be said, and I know for a fact the public service provided by my former colleagues is what they are about. Many, as we can see, are paid poverty wages, being forced to claim DWP benefits themselves. If there are 27,000 staff in the DWP earning below the national minimum wage, isn’t it a national disgrace?

It is but one example of our crumbling society after 13 years of Conservative misrule. Last week, Brand Rishi Sunak, Schrödinger’s prime minister who is simultaneously there and not there, appeared in a ghostly party political broadcast from a dimly-lit room, as if he too was struggling to pay his electric bill. (With a joint bank account with his wife containing some £750 million, this is unlikely.) “Things have been shit,” he explained, “But I have been chosen to fix them, especially the mess bequeathed to me by the former chancellor who, coincidentally, shares my name.” One of his so-called promises is to “stop the boats”, which I am sure is at the front of everyone’s mind as they struggle to put bread on the table.

Of all the workers currently taking strike, civil servants are among the worst paid. Not all of them, obviously, but those nearer to the bottom of the food chain, as I was not long ago, are struggling like never before. And Sunak’s threat to sack people who take strike action will only strengthen their resolve to fight for a better pay rise. If you have next to nothing to lose, I suppose having nothing left to lose is a logical next step.