Fresh blow to Parker as civil service unions threaten strike action

Oh, Charlie... this just ain’t your month, is it?

Not 3 weeks after the hapless SOJ Chief Executive was revealed in a major scandal to have been granted full housing quallies as a condition of his employment, Charlie Parker has been humiliated once again as major civil service unions have not only rejected his latest pay offer, but have threatened to go on strike in order to get a better deal.

Since March, and as part of his grand plan to reform government in Jersey, Parker has been failing attempting to negotiate a series of two-year pay deals with unions representing States employees. Parker’s opening bid, despite an organisation-wide propaganda drive, roundly rejected by civil service unions and, since then, negotiations have been ongoing - apart from a short break in May, when SOJ negotiatiors tried to make a show of force by not bothering to show up to talks. The unions weren’t impressed.

Charlie’s latest offer is hardly much less of a piss-take than his opener, as far as civil servants are concerned - while manual workers would receive a 7.9% rise, doctors 7%, nurses and midwives 6.6% and teachers and uniformed services 6.1%, civil servants are being asked to suck up a 4.1% rise. For civil servants, more than half of their deal is made up of non-consolidated payments - essentially a one-off payment that adds nothing to their actual salary or pension. Once again, public sector unions aren’t impressed. Their response? The deal “isn’t worth the paper it’s written upon” and that they’re now seriously considering going on strike. Jersey Civil Servants Association chairman Terry Renouf, spokesperson for both Prospect and the JCSA, wasn’t having any of it, slamming Parker’s offer as a “very damaging approach” and saying it “represents a further degradation of the standard of living for our members and their families on top of the recent years where below cost of living awards have been made. The offer does nothing to counter the already low morale amongst civil service staff, who continue to receive a lack of respect from their employer. No one has a problem with doctors, nurses and so on getting paid more but not at the expense of other pay groups. Non-consolidated cash payments are not worth the paper they are written on – they are non-pensionable and not added to base salary. At the end of the day, there is only a certain amount of goodwill in the pot, and now I’m afraid to say that it has drained away. This is very disappointing for our current members, and it is going to discourage people from coming to work here because they will be able to see quite clearly that the States of Jersey is not a good employer.”.

“We will ballot our members on the current offer with a recommendation to reject and are considering an industrial action ballot if the offer is rejected.”

Yikes. I hope Parker realises that the PR battle a strike would necessarily involve isn’t something he’s got a chance in hell of winning. Both among his own staff and among the public, Parker is about as popular as plague, especially after the recent quallies fiasco. The gravy train him and his interim directors are widely perceived to be riding isn’t a great look, to say the least, and this escalation is hardly going to help matters. Civil servants shouldn’t be expected to lie down and take it - Parker’s intransigence is what has escalated things this far.

Let’s hope he doesn’t escalate further.