2 Day Strike Begins

Approximately 270,000 civil servants have gone on strike for a period of 48 hours following disputes over the way in which redundancy pay is being calculated. This is thought to be one of the largest levels of dispute for over twenty years. A range of services are likely to be affected including courts, tax centre and job centres as members of the Public and Commercial Services Union stage their walk out.

Tessa Jowell criticised the decision saying that many of the terms were better than they would find in comparable private sector firms. However the union still argues that making such changes will have a negative impact on many public sector workers with a spokesperson saying: "It's very destabilising for our members, some of whom have worked for over 30 years for the public service, to suddenly realise they could lose their job and actually a large amount of money they would have depended on. People over the years have accepted that pay isn't what it should be but they felt their job was secure and their pension was decent. Now in the last few years, 100,000 jobs have gone, and many more are likely to go after the election, so people feel very vulnerable."