The government has condemned a planned strike by immigration officials over job cuts and pay that threatens to disrupt services during the Olympics.
In a ballot by the Public and Commercial Services union among its 15,700 Home Office members, which include most workers from the UK Border Agency, Identity and Passport Service and Criminal Records Bureau, 57% voted in favour of walking out, on a turnout of 20%.
About 5,500 PCS members are employed directly in border operations, but other Home Office employees are also supplementing the activities of normal staff during the Games.
The Border Force is already stretched, with extra workers having been drafted in to try and prevent a repeat of scenes earlier in the year when visitors to the UK were reportedly forced to wait for three or four hours in order to clear immigration.
While the PCS has yet to decide what action to take, legally it must give seven days’ notice to strike. This means that immigration officials could take action on the day before the Olympics opening ceremony – the day that Heathrow expects most Games’ sponsors and international media to arrive.
The union said that its members were unhappy about:
- Job losses taking place at the Home Office, and particularly voluntary redundancies
- Pay and conditions such as government plans to cap pay rises at 1% for the next two years
- The use of private companies to clear a backlog of immigration and asylum casework at the Border Agency.
Potential disruption
PCS general secretary, Mark Serwotka, said that he believed ministers had acted “recklessly and irresponsibly” by cutting so many jobs and, in the case of the Border Agency, “have simply tried to paper over the cracks by deploying severely undertrained staff at our borders”.
He added: “If these issues are not resolved, they threaten to seriously undermine the Home Office’s ability to provide vital public services, and we cannot sit back and allow that to happen.”
But immigration minister Damian Green condemned any strike action as “completely unacceptable”. He warned the union that the public would not support the move and called on it to reconsider.
“Only about one in 10 PCS member voted for strike action. The union leadership has not authority to call disruptive strikes on that basis and should think again,” he told the BBC.
The security of the UK border was “of the utmost importance” and a trained pool of contingency staff would be deployed to try and minimise any disruption,” Green added.
