There is a temptation to regard the Pensions Regulator as something “other” and the people who work there as being different. The Pension Regulator, in employment terms is no different from any “other” , the people who work there have the same needs as anyone else.
News that the Pensions Regulator’s staff are going on strike is sad news, but it is tells me that the Regulator’s staff have reached the limit of “compliance” and now choose to exercise their right to withdraw labour. They are not happy.
The PCS union says “nearly all” of its 371 members at the Pension Regulator’s Brighton headquarters, will be strike taking action over the next fortnight. That is nearly half the TPR’s workforce
Those going on strike include “nearly all” enforcement officers at TPR said PCS.
— Josephine Cumbo (@JosephineCumbo) January 9, 2024
I see the tensions at the Pensions Regulator as both necessary and ultimately desirable. There is nothing that could be worse for TPR than a spineless acceptance that as regulatory officials , they are “other” and beyond taking arms against a sea of troubles.
I can’t say I’ve ever gone on strike, but understanding those who do is important. Going on strike means sacrificing pay and is rarely about the happy faces around the brazier, the image of disputes of my youth. It is a “cold and hollow hallelujah” – to use Leonard Cohen’s phrase, an assertion of a right not to agree.
And on the other side of the dispute, those who are calling for new practices and new working conditions. The executive of any organisation are at odds with their own colleagues.
Having been to the Pensions Regulator a fair few times, I think it a Regulator which has a clear sense of its own place. Sometimes I have found the people there self-important to the point of pomposity, sometimes I have found them too compliant, almost as if some suffer from an under-confidence. It would be wrong to generalise about the culture.
At yesterday’s Pension PlayPen coffee morning, at which there were no members of the Pensions Regulator on the call, we discussed the confusing signals coming out of the Pensions Regulator. The old creed hitting up against a new one. Overseeing this, a relatively new CEO and executive and a quite different Chair.
It is disruptive to staff, to have to cope with the degree of change brought not just by new management but a new attitude from the paymaster – the DWP. It is disruptive to move to new premises at such a time and I am not surprised that many of TPR’s staff are fed up.
The view I have of TPR is that it is undergoing necessary change and what is needed from outsiders like most of my readers, is a little sympathy. The Pensions Regulator is not different, it is made up of people like us, who need to feel valued. I hope both for the sake of the Executive and the Staff, that this strike will end well and end soon.