UK civil servants plan winter strike unless demands are met

Thousands of British civil servants are planning for one month of “sustained industrial action” through the winter in an ongoing pay dispute, the head of the Public and Commercial Services union said on Friday.

Mark Serwotka told reporters that employees from the interior ministry, including the Border Force, and from the Department for Transport would take part in industrial action, set to begin from mid-December, if pay demands were not met.

The PCS union, which represents workers employed by several government departments and has around 200,000 members, said last week an average of 86.2 per cent of its balloted members voted for industrial action, the highest percentage vote in its history.

In response to finance minister Jeremy Hunt’s budget on Thursday in which the Rishi Sunak-led government took a more austere approach to public spending, PCS accused the government of “heaping more misery onto hardworking people.”