I’ve had a letter from Mark Page of the Public and Commercial Services Union. As I am unaware of the nature of the dispute, I am grateful to hear what it is all about. I suspect you may feel the same way.
The letter couldn’t be clearer and no doubt the dispute hinges on pay. If I inferred that it was about morale, culture or anything else, that is my opinion and clearly not one shared by the staff on strike.
That said, we need the staff to be happy, productive and working with the pensions industry to get better pensions, clearly that isn’t the case and clearly we aren’t getting a lot of things done , which are all of our responsibility. So I hope this strike is resolved quickly and justly.
Mark’s letter is printed in full below.
M
Dear Henry
The blog post, TPR’s new broom wins hearts and minds at WPC, notes strike action by staff at the regulator.
It correctly said TPR staff had, at that time, taken part in more than 20 days of industrial action. However, the reasons given for the strikes are inaccurate. Our strike solely relates to pay.
On behalf of TPR’s striking workers, The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union would like the opportunity to set the record straight.
The industrial action is not a reaction to TPR’s recent office move of just over half a mile or organisational changes.
The strikes are about securing fair pay for all TPR staff, but especially the lower paid,
TPR failed to secure the 5% pay pot made available to all other public sector organisations subject to the Treasury Guidance on civil service pay awards.
Instead, TPR has only 3% to distribute to increase staff pay.
However, TPR’s “performance-related pay” and legacy bonus system favours senior and higher-paid roles, and fuels pay inequalities.
As a result, many staff will see no pay increase at all, or punitive pay awards of as little as 0.5-2%.
Our strike is about obtaining parity with other civil servants struggling with a cost-of-living crisis.
The government’s own guidance allowed departments, including TPR, the flexibility to award a pay increase of up to 4.5%, with an extra 0.5% to be targeted to further increase pay for lower-paid staff.
Of the 212 organisations falling under this guidance, 211 awarded the full amount. TPR is the only one to impose a pay remit of just 3% overall.
Our industrial action is not about working conditions or resistance to a “new mindset”.
TPR’s staff have already proven themselves committed public servants. They’ve shown they are flexible and adaptable, having shifted to home working during the Covid pandemic and hybrid working following the easing of national restrictions. Innovation has been at the heart of how TPR delivers its priorities for many years, so no change there either.
While PCS are keen to work with TPR to ensure hybrid working is effective, concerns around working conditions are not part of the current industrial action.
Our strike is about fair pay.
We believe all TPR staff, those striking and those not, are dedicated to seeing TPR succeed.
But while some senior TPR staff on six-figure salaries look set to benefit from five-figure bonuses, others, who received a 0% pay “rise”, are worrying about how they’ll afford increases mortgage payments and childcare. They were not given targeted pay increases to ease their struggle, as anticipated under the Treasury Guidance, which provided the flexibility to use 0.5% of the pay remit to address their financial challenges.
While TPR unilaterally brought pay negotiations to a close and imposed a pay settlement, we do not consider negotiations to be “exhausted”. We presented a proposal to use part of the bonus pot to increase pay – and expressly asked to continue negotiations. TPR refused.
All we want is for TPR’s executive to return to talks to reach a fair resolution that reflects government pay remit guidance and addresses pay inequalities – so staff can return to work.
Staff on strike want TPR to succeed but they need to be paid fairly, too.
If you have any further enquiries about the TPR strike I would be happy to answer them.
Yours sincerely,
Mark Page
PCS Industrial Officer
Do TPR and the FCA have a joint strategy to have quite bad industrial relations?
I cannot find anything from the TPR that explains the (on the face of it) strange decision to exacerbate their employees’ real terms pay cuts by not giving them as much as Treasury would allow. There is obviously some rationale for this that executives have explained in the pay talks themselves and to the Board and others, but I havent seen it written anywhere public. It’s hard to think what might be so different about TPR that would explain it.
I wonder what the criteria are for a senior person at TPR to win a bonus/performance related pay?
I propose linking TPR bonuses to the number of active members in DB (and CDC) schemes. If the number of actives goes up => bonus! If the number of actives goes down => no bonus!