Tories slam claimants and civil servants

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The Tories put them on the dole - then pinch pennies from thei THE recent Budget was no surprise to those who work in the Department of Health and Social Security or the Department of Employment.

It was well within Thatcher's promises of reducing welfare spending by keeping benefits only just above starvation level. Since 1979 the Tories have eroded the living standards of those who can't work. The two social security Acts abolished Earnings Related Supplement, made unemployment benefits taxable, abolished supplementary benefit for those with over £2,000 of capital, and tightened up the rules on exceptional needs payments, so that only those on supplementhem, (and even then they have to prove that an exceptional need does exist!)

Shrinking The shrinking rates of National Insurance Benefits (e.g. sickness benefit, invalidity benefit, maternity allowance, retirement pensions * and unemployment benefit) have created a higher and higher percentage of supplementary benefit claimants, who are of course quite stringently means-tested.

Cuts have also been made in the civil service workforce. When Thatcher was elected, there were 732,000 industrial and nonindustrial civil servants. In October 1981 there were 679,835. The Tory government aims to cut the civil service by 100,000 between 1979 Since 1979 Sir Derek Rayner, managing director of Marks and Spencer and champion of 'free enterprise" has conducted 68 "scrutinies" into the activities of the civil service.

By the end of 1982 he will have conducted a total of 108.

Rayner has so far identified 11,000 possible job cuts. Four-weekly payment of Child Benefit in arrears and direct payment of some benefits into banks are some of Rayners ideas. He also has plans to do away with the government's statistics collecting service with a loss of up to 2,500 jobs, and to change the way National Insurance contributions are recorded -to reduce more jobs.

Rayner's most damaging proposals are those for the unemployed. he intendsto:

a) Make registration for work at Job Centres voluntary. b) Combine the payment of supplementary and unemployment benefit at one office - thus cutting more jobs.

c) Yes, you've guessed it, increase fraud investigation.

The CPSA - the largest civil service union, representing nearly a quarter of a million, mostly in lower paid, clerical grades, and the National Federation of Claimants Unions - have opposed all Rayner's proposals.

At first sight voluntary registration for work seems a god-send to the newly unemployed. In fact, it is thoroughly detrimental to those with the poorest job prospects.

Because the very few unemployed with decent job prospects will turn to private agencies and the press for vacancies, employers will stop using Job Centres and the government will have the excuse it needs to close down job centres and the specialised service they are supposed to provide.

Although Tebbit has not yet admitted it, closure of Job Centres will result in redundancies.

Attached to voluntary registration is ethnic minority monitoring by staff in Unemployment Benefit Offices.

In principle this is not new. Since 1963 there has been some monitoring of non-whites by staff in Job Centres, as a result of the various Immigration Acts.

However staff have generally ignored it, as it is not necessary when helping someone to find a job.

As a result the government has only sketchy and inaccurate statistics.

The new questions to be asked at unemployment offices will be about ethnic origin, not country of birth. ir dole money These sort of questions were going to be included in the national census, but black organisations objected and they were dropped.

The categories used to define ethnic origin will be those in the Nationality Bill. Ethnic minority only affect those who don't monitoring wur vi cumor an ill of pree appear to be British.

The DHSS is the most highly unionised and one of the best organised parts of the civil service trade DHSS workers make up the largest section of CPSA and they have been some of the most militant members in the union.

The government aims to cut DHSS jobs by at least 10,000. The Warner Report provides a way of doing this and undermining the strength of the unions.

DHSS is presently divided up into 12 regions. These will be amalgamated to produce seven. Regional Offices will be closed and their specialised work transferred to local social security offices.

41,800 jobs will be lost at Regional level but local offices will only get another 600 extra staff and 90% of these will go into fraud or special investigation. • ' The power of local office managers will be massively increased. Managers will control training, resulting in more inadequate "desk top" training.

In areas where there are few welfare rights organisations, claimants will suffer from the decisions of mean managers, who will have greater control over the way all claims are dealt with and fraud investigation in particular.

A third social security Bill is now making its way through Parliament, unfortunately with little opposition from either Labour MPs or trades unions.

This Bill is the first step towards the privatisation of benefits payments.

It abolishes the first eight weeks of sickness benefit, and industrial injury benefit altogether, and replaces it with employers' statutory sickness benefit. It also introduces voluntary registration for work and the unified housing benefit scheme for council tenants. Altogether it will cut 6,000 jobs in DHSS.

The campaign against it has not attracted the support from the trade unions necessary to defeat job losses.

The TUC and the leaders of the civil service unions have clung to the coat tails of the CBI who originally opposed the Bill. Now that the government allows employers to recoup 100% of the sick pay from their monthly NI contributions, the CBI are supporting the Bill!

On top of all this there are less obvious cuts in the civil service. They range from the closing down of research and advice provided by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries to the reduction of the government's own repairs body, the PSA.

The government's Defence Review will cut thousands of jobs in naval dock yards. The civil service commission and the number of Quangos are to be reduced.

The government intends to hive-off to private industry the heavy Goods Vehicle CLAI Official Tory Gove.

Workers Scl NEWYM, BM Box 5277, London WCIN 3XX.

, Emergenc CPSA ant in DHSS Testing Stations and the 12 Royal Ordnance factories. The list of job losses is almost endless.

Certainly the civil service and the welfare state as a whole are bureaucratic, unjust and inefficient. The whole system has to be revolutionised, through a planned economy, and controlled for and by the working class who use it.

The press and the Tory government exploit the reactionary and divisive view that civil servants are drinking scroungers in pin-striped suits. In fact most civil servants are women doing poorly paid and increasingly complex clerical jobs under increasing pressure from more and more desperate and aggressive claimants.

As in the rest of the public sector, women are concentrated in the lower grades. 99% of typing grades, 80% of Clerical Assistants and 65% of Clerical Officers and only 7.5% of senior executive officers are women!

After the fiasco of the 1981 civil service pay campaign and the acceptance by the Council of Civil Service Unions of any arbitration agreement for 1982, we can't put any faith in the civil service trade union leadership.

Alistair Graham, the CPSA General Secretaryelect, has already made it clear in the Guardian that he will put Militant-bashing before leading a real fight against the government's pay offer!

Civil service workers must not rely on arbitration. All-out strike action is the only way to defend jobs and pay.

CPSA must not tie itself to the management unions like the FDA and IPCS but instead make real fighting links with other public sector workers like the nurses, who have everything to gain and nothing to lose by militant action.

The third social security Bill can and must be stopped, but the fight has to go wider than the civil service unions. Labour MPs and the TUC must be prepared to oppose it in and outside Parliament, through questions, filibustering and mass action.

Inside:

Lotter enment Job Offer ISSUE.

4. 1 sach 1982 10 the 1,!.

OPINION y Resolution

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PHOTO: JOHN HARRIS tary benefit can receive

WA SLA can't afford to employ na