HMRC workers vote for strike
More than half of revenue staff polled have voted for industrial action
WORKERS at HM Revenue & Customs have voted to engage in industrial action amid a dispute over job cuts and privatisation.
The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union said more than half of staff polled voted in favour of strikes, while three-quarters favoured protests, stopping short of walking out, The Guardian reports.
It is believed the PCS – the largest civil service union, holding 55,000 members in HMRC alone – is contemplating following doctors and nurses in staging industrial action on 21 June.
The British Medical Association this week declared its 130,000 members voted in favour of industrial action for the first time since 1975, in a row over public sector pension reforms.
The move is dependent on the involvement of health workers in the Unite union, who joined PCS action on 10 May.
Mark Serwotka, general secretary for the PCS, said: “When reducing the budget deficit is supposedly the government’s number one priority, it makes absolutely no economic sense to cut ever more staff from the very department responsible for collecting the tax that fund all our other public services.”
He added that 30,000 jobs had been cut at HMRC since 2005.
HMRC said it was disappointed with the vote and would do everything it could to maintain services during industrial action.