Death knell sounds for 200 tax office jobs

By Emily Walker

From Swindon Advertiser

MORE than 200 people working for the tax office in Swindon will lose their jobs by 2010.

Union leaders are in discussions this week, following the announcement of plans to leave just a handful of staff working for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs Swindon office by 2010.

The Public and Commercial Services union has vowed the fight the closure of the Farnsby Street office that employs 210 workers on its payroll.

PCS’s Swindon chairman Phil Robbins said: “The government has said it plans to close the Swindon tax office by 2010. “The nearest offices will be Southampton, Birmingham and Bristol. Not only will that put people’s jobs in serious jeopardy, but people using the service could also have to travel long distances.”

Mr Robbins said the government programme to make the tax service leaner was the result of more people using new technology to pay tax bills, get advice and manage debts.

Staff at Swindon’s HMRC office were told about the threat to their jobs last Thursday.“We would have thought in a town as big as Swindon it would have been viable to keep this office open. More people in the area are now making payments with debit cards or online.

But not everyone can do that. And it is more likely to be the same people who would struggle to travel to Bristol to meet someone in person, ” said Mr Robbins.

Union members have not decided to strike yet, but if a walkout went ahead, there could be hold-ups in tax bills being paid, and P45s being sent out and rebates being settled.

The union said the service already had more than a million tax credit repayments, tax returns, p45s, and tax codes in a backlog of unposted mail, and job cuts would only make problems worse.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said the tax service would be “unfit” if 15 per cent of its budget was axed between 2008 and 2011. Mr Serwotka said: “PCS will fight these job cuts and office closures, not only on behalf of our members but to protect the public service we provide, often to the most vulnerable members of our communities.”

An HMRC spokeswoman said:

“No concrete decisions have been made at the moment and staff in Swindon will get a chance to give feedback from February next year.

Swindon is part of a cluster of offices within a 25-mile radius so we would be looking to relocate staff within 25 miles.

People working similar jobs will work in the same office, which makes sense and saves money.

In places where we already have an inquiry centre, the inquiry service will be kept within a few miles. So people will be able to make inquiries in Swindon, but there would be a few people rather than few hundred working in the office.”

Royal Mail Closures

Royal Mail is proposing to close three major mail centres at Reading, Gloucester and Coventry. This would probably involve compulsory redundancies. From an environmental point of view this is a lunacy since it would mean mail from the three centres being sent to Swindon, Bristol and Northampton and then back.

The CWU isopposing the closures. Swindon Trades Union Council has written to the CWU expressing its support for them. Our letter is reproduced below.

To the CWU

Dear Comrades

Swindon Trades Union Council at its meeting yesterday discussed the proposed closure of Royal Mail centres at Reading, Gloucester and Coventry. As the ‘receiving’ town with the prospect of extra jobs we could take a selfish point of view. However, that would be completely unprincipled, at the expense of workers losing their jobs in three centres.

Moreover, from an environmental point of view, the idea of workers and mail travelling from Reading to Swindon (and back), Gloucester to Bristol, and Coventry to Northampton, is sheer lunacy, adding to environmental pollution at a time when we are supposed to be tackling the problem of global warming. I have already spoken to some people in the green/environmental movement who will support your opposition to the closures.

Undoubtedly, this proposal of Royal Mail is related to the liberalisation of the postal ‘market’ which the government has seen fit to push through. It is a cost-cutting measure which is directed at ‘shaping up to meet the competition’. This so-called commercial environment is, of course, a threat to the universal service obligation and the Post Office as a public service. Whilst liberalisation originates from the European Union it fits neatly with the government’s free market fundamentalism which has led it to introduce a ‘market’ in the NHS and privatisation and cuts throughout the public sector.

Obviously you will be discussing an industrial response to the threat of closure and of compulsory redundancies. We would like to offer our support in the wider public campaigning against these proposals which are socially and environmentally retrograde. Please let us know anything which you would want us to do in support of your struggle.

We will contact the Trades Councils in Bristol and Northampton, the other towns where distribution will be centralised and suggest we produce a joint statement, in support of the CWU and against the closures.

Fraternally

Martin Wicks
Secretary, Swindon Trades Union Council

Health Crisis, what crisis?

STUC Secretary Martin Wicks writes on the news of redundancies at Swindon’s Great Western Hospital and the national health crisis.

No wonder Patricia Hewitt was booed by nurses at the RCN conference. To assert that this has been “the best year ever” for the NHS contradicts the reality experienced by staff and patients, as the redundancies mount up around the country. What appears incomprehensible to many is why this crisis is taking place when the government is spending more money than ever before on the NHS. Where is the money going? Some of it has gone to increased wages for NHS staff (historically many of them lowly paid), but most of that has gone to the new consultants’ contract, and to GPs. Still more is being handed over to private companies as a result of the introduction by this government of a ‘competitive market’. In fact they are throwing money at the private sector. Far from open competition, PCTs have been instructed to hand over work to the private sector. The government has introduced a ‘payments by results’ system for the NHS, but the private companies have been guaranteed payment whether or not they do the amount of work they are contracted to do.So whilst hospitals around the country are making cuts in service because they do not have sufficient funds to carry out all the work that they could, private companies are being paid for work which they have not done. In furtherance of their free market ideology the government is giving privileges to big business. This is a system which will necessarily eat away at the very foundations of the NHS because, under ‘payment b y results’, the less work the NHS does then the less money it receives. This is not a ‘free market’ but a system which the government has rigged in favour of private business. In fact in order to encourage the private sector to enter into the ‘health market’ the government is actually paying an average of 11% more per operation to private companies than it pays the NHS!

What has precipitated the rush of thousands of redundancies around the country is the instruction from the government that all Trusts have to balance their books. The NHS is to operate like a profit-making business. But, of course, it is not making things, but treating people who do not fall sick by order. As one health worker said to me, what happens if the budget has run out and there is a smash on the motorway? Do they turn the patients away? Send them to another hospital? The answer, of course, is that they would make cuts elsewhere.

These reforms supposedly to improve ‘efficiency’. But since the government has decided that the NHS must operate like a business, the measure of efficiency comes down to the ‘bottom line’. It is budget driven. Under the old system if a hospital over-spent as a result of an increase in numbers of people they treated, a situation beyond its control, the additional money necessary was provided.

In Wiltshire the crisis is unprecedented.

• The Great Western Hospital in Swindon is proposing 99 redundancies and a further 99 posts to be frozen.
• In the area of the Kennett and North Wilts PCT, it is proposed to close 5 community hospitals. Depending on which option is chosen, Melksham and Savernake hospitals could be closed, leaving just Chippenham hospital open.
• Malmesbury Community hospital’s maternity and minor injuries unit has already been closed by Kennet & North Wilts PCT.
• In January debts were announced of £8.2 million for Kennet & North Wilts, £3.7 million for South Wiltshire PCT, £1.7 million for Swindon & Marlborough Trust, and £7.5 million for West Wiltshire PCT.

As a result of the financial crisis of the PCT’s, the Intermediate Treatment Centre at the Great Western Hospital has 36 out of 108 beds unused (20 of these beds are in any case already already for private work) because of drops in ‘demand’ from surrounding PCTs. The purpose of building the ICT was to take pressure off of the beds in the GWH. Chief Executive Lyn Hill-Tout has now come up with the brilliant idea of leasing more space to the private sector!

The redundancies proposed for the Great Western are designed to save £2.2 million a year. But they are not “efficiency savings”. In a paper presented to the Trust Board on April 28th the management admit the cuts “will lead to reduced staff for patient care”. Moreover, although they are asking for volunteers for redundancy they will have discretion over who is given redundancy, depending on how much each individual would receive (length of service etc). So whether there are sufficient volunteers remains to be seen. Either way the loss of jobs will impact on the service provided. The Trust has merely said it will try to ‘mitigate’ the impact.

The Swindon Advertiser editorial described this situation as “yet more evidence of the shameful and chronic shortfall in funding it must perennially suffer.” From this it draws the conclusion that:

“The fact that the money should come from Whitehall is something that the hospital, like the rest of Swindon will just have to live with.”

On the contrary, given that this is just the beginning of the crisis, instead of such a ‘nothing can be done’ attitude, it is necessary to campaign for a fundamental change of direction from the ‘health market’ that the government is introducing.

When the NHS was founded in 1948 it was a decision to take health care out of the market; to turn it into a social service rather than a commodity which people had to buy or go without if they could not afford to pay. Health care was considered as something which was a social right irrespective of the economic circumstances of each individual.

Whilst the current government says that it will continue with health care free at the point of delivery, they have undermined the rationale for a free service (actually based on general taxation). It has introduced a system in which Trusts compete with each other for patients. ‘Patient choice’ treats patients as if they were ‘consumers’ paying for a commodity. In reality patients do not want a choice when they are sick. They would like to be treated at the local hospital, or the nearest one which dealt with their particular illness if it was a specialised discipline. They do not want to have to drive a long way because their local hospital has been closed.

To preserve what is best about the NHS there is an urgent need for a campaign to reverse the ‘reforms’ which the government has introduced; end the ‘health market’ and competition for patients.

Nationally the Keep Our NHS Public (http://www.keepournhspublic.com) campaign has been launched to oppose the government’s reforms. It brings together NHS staff and their trades unions, patients and supporters of the NHS. The latest support came recently when the Junior Doctors’ conference within the BMA voted to support the campaign.

There is some interest expressed amongst NHS staff for setting up a local group of KONP. If anybody is interested in helping out please contact us by email ( swindontuc@btinternet.com ) or ring 07786394593.

GMB slates job losses at Great Western Hospital

GMB, Britain’s General Union, attacked plans by the management of the Great Western Hospital in Swindon to axe up to 200 jobs, 99 of which were likely to involve redundancy.

4 May 2006
Trade unions at the Great Western Hospital were told today (4 May) that the Trust needed to make £2.2m in savings per annum as a result of a financial deficit. The Trust is required to achieve a balanced budget this year and faces a potential deficit of £5m.

Kevin Brandstatter, GMB Organiser for Swindon said: “The Swindon and Marlborough NHS Trust are the latest Trust to suffer financial problems as a result of Government policy. Patricia Hewitt was quite rightly booed off the stage at the union conferences last week. The continued bungling ineptitude of the Government is now putting the health and wellbeing of people from Swindon and North Wiltshire at risk. The decision to replace the Princess Margaret Hospital with a new hospital based on the much criticised PFI process is also partly responsible for the financial mess surrounding the Great Western Hospital. The Trust has contractual obligation to Carillion, the owners and builders of the Hospital to pay them irrespective of the financial state of the Trust or the need to provide services to patients. The essence of the PFI project is now abundantly clear - private profit first, patient care second. If the Trust did not have to pay such massive sums to a private company it would not have to make so many job cuts.

It is clear that patient care will be compromised by the cuts in staff at the hospital – there is no way that a hospital can lose so many jobs without disruption to patient care. The Trust will try obviously try to avoid compulsory redundancies by not filling these posts and by natural wastage, but when a nurse or health care assistant leaves and is not replaced there is one less person to look after patients.

GMB will defend members’ interests vigorously and intends to campaign against these unnecessary job losses”.

Compulsory redundancies signal NHS crisis

According to the BBC the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke-on-Trent has announced that up to 1,000 jobs (from a staff of 7,000) could be cut to address their financial crisis; a £17 million defecit. An estimated 370 of the posts will be nurses and midwives. Vacant posts may not be filled to help reduce staffing and 15 consultant posts could be cut. In a staggering statement of complacency the Department of Health said it was ‘reassured services would not be cut.’ Staff have been told about 750 compulsory redundancies may be needed. This is the direct result of the government’s determination that Trusts must ‘live within their budgets whilst providing patients with better services’! This is nonsense. Under the new system of ‘payment by results’ Trusts which treat ‘too many’ people get financially penalised. As a result of the commercialisation of the NHS and the new ‘market in health care’ efficiency is measured not in terms of the quality of care given to patients but by the balance sheet.

The emergence of compulsory redundancies is a salutory reminder that the government is destroying the foundations of the NHS, and the responsibility of those who support social health care to organise a national campaign against the government’s disastrous privatisation agenda.

Visit: http://www.keepournhspublic.com/