Cut to the bone

Unite joins other unions in support of industrial action as police staff face pay cuts and service suffers

After being offered a paltry one per cent pay rise this year, Unite’s police staff members joined two other unions yesterday (December 8) in support of industrial action.

 
The police staff, which include 999 call handlers, police community support officers and custody officers, have faced a plunging 13 per cent fall in real-terms pay since 2010.

 
Joining UNISON and the GMB, Unite balloted its police staff, who strongly favoured taking action against yet another below-inflation pay rise—58 per cent supported strike action, with over 78 per cent supporting action short of a strike.

 
Unite national officer Fiona Farmer said that low and stagnating pay among police staff, who provide essential services, inevitably affects their ability to do a challenging job.

 
“Police staff who help keep our communities safe are struggling to pay the bills and put food on the table,” Farmer explained.

 
“What they are being offered is yet another pay cut in real terms and comes on top of several years of pay cuts and pay freezes,” she added. “They have been on the sharp end of the coalition’s police cuts.”

 
Non-stop cuts

 
The potential strike action looms as the provision of police services has suffered attack after attack under the Tory-led coalition government’s sinister agenda of slashing public services.

 
“Beyond the pay issue, police staff numbers are being cut, and so they’re bringing in volunteers to do essential police staff duties,” Farmer explained.

 
“In some cases, they’ll bring in police officers to take up the work of staff,” Farmer said. “For example, to handle 999 calls previously being handled by staff, they were bringing in police officers, who were then being taken off critical frontline duties. It’s just one of the many number of ways the police service is being imperilled under public service cuts.”

 
Earlier in October, the Guardian reported on this very trend, in which 9,000 police support volunteers have replaced some 15,000 staff jobs cut since the coalition government’s ascent to power in 2010.

 
“With such deep levels of staff cuts, we find that our members are working so much harder for what amounts to less pay in real terms,” Farmer noted.

 
The conditions under which police officers and staff toil under came to light in a recent survey revealing extremely low levels of morale. The Police Federation survey found that because of cuts to pay and conditions, thousands of police officers plan on leaving the service in the coming years.

 
And Lincolnshire chief constable Neil Rhodes warned in a letter to home secretary yesterday (December 8) that proposed cuts would substantially threaten the public and render its service completely “unsustainable” by 2018.

 
Farmer warned that cuts were only the beginning if a Tory government were to secure a victory in the upcoming general election.

 
“If the Tories are elected in May, the police service will be pared back even further,” she said. “It will have a significant impact on crime and justice in this country.”

 
Indeed, if post-election cuts to the police force go through as planned, the service will see 1 in 6 police jobs go. The Association of Chief Police Officers recently claimed a conservative estimate would mean 34,000 officer and staff jobs would be gone by 2015.

 
“With services cut to the bone, we’ll be seeing more and more unpaid volunteers taking on essential roles,” Farmer added. “We have to ask ourselves, how exactly is that going to work? Something’s got to give.”