Cuts fear for historic sites

Tower of London

By New Worker correspondent

Mass redundancies and wage cuts are faced as Historic Royal Palaces plans to reopen sites without agreement with PCS, the civil service union that represents workers at the palaces.

Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) manage iconic British landmarks such as the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace and Hillsborough Castle in northern Ireland. Members of PCS, the biggest civil service union in the country, work as heads of departments, Yeoman Warders, and in admissions, security, retail, IT and conservation.

The palaces are currently closed to the public due to the coronavirus pandemic but the grounds of Hampton Court and Hillsborough were reopened on 18th June and there’s plans to extend access to other sites in early July.

As a Charitable Trust the Historic Royal Palaces are heavily dependent on income generated by the paying public and have no government subsidy. The massive loss of income forecasted means that its business model as a charitable trust, dependent on visitor income, is no longer financially viable as visitor numbers are not expected to return to previous levels for at least four years.

In order to resolve its financial predicament the Historic Royal Palaces has rushed to take measures that will have a devastating effect on staff. These include a 25 per cent cut in the wage bill by mass redundancies, a 20 per cent cut in pay for both furloughed staff and staff still currently working and slashing employer pensions contributions

PCS has called for government intervention to save jobs and ensure members are properly paid and able to work safely in their Historic Royal Palaces workplaces. The union

says these sites have not been adequately risk assessed. This means that these workplaces are not safe to work in under the current Covid-19 pandemic.

            The five tests are:

·       No wider return until communities are safe

·       Workplaces must only be for essential work

·       Workplaces must be safe places

·       Staff must be individually assessed

·       Coronavirus outbreaks must be controlled.

The culture and heritage sectors, like many other areas of British life, have been hit by years of austerity. The failure of the government to support PCS members working in the Historic Royal Palaces and allow the destruction of jobs of dedicated staff sets a disturbing precedent for other iconic institutions that are also largely dependent on visitors for the income.

A Tory Renationalisation

Tory governments are better known for privatising than nationalising things; but they have recently reversed one of their own privatisations. This is the probation services in England and Wales, which are to be brought back under public ownership and control thus ending the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) strategy begun in 2014 that outsourced most probation operations.

This began naturally enough with the handling of low- and medium-risk offenders. The more demanding cases were kept in the rump public sector because they were not very profitable.

Constant complaints about the poor quality of the privatised service resulted in an increase in reoffending rates so bad that even a Tory government had to take notice. In December it was announced that low and medium services would return to the public sector, with only back-office services remaining. Now these too are returning to the public sector with about 2,000 jobs.

March 2019 saw the chief inspector of probation denounce the partial outsourcing as “irredeemably flawed” and the then Justice minister Rory Stewart admitted “the current model isn’t working” while the National Audit Office said that the privatisation was “Not only extremely costly for taxpayers, but we have seen the number of people on short sentences recalled to prison skyrocket”.

The two unions in the sector welcomed the retreat. George Georgiou, GMB’s national officer, said: “We are delighted that the Lord Chancellor has taken this pragmatic step. All the evidence suggests it will reduce reoffending, protect the public and save taxpayers money,” adding that: “There is much work to do still in harmonising the conditions of service of existing staff and filling an enormous number of vacancies.”

The National Association of Probation Officers added that there is “still have a long way to go to ensure that we have a fully functioning and effective probation service that enables probation professionals to carry out the work to the standards they want”.

Spy Jobs at Risk

Civil Service union PCS has started a campaign to save the jobs of some of Britain’s spies.

Their jobs are at risk because their nominal employer, the British Council, has been forced to close 44 out of its 47 English language schools across the globe.

The British Council was founded in 1934 by the wife of the Head of MI6, “to create in a country overseas a basis of friendly knowledge and understanding of the people of this country, of their philosophy and way of life, which will lead to a sympathetic appreciation of British foreign policy”. Its language schools and other cultural institutions have for decades provided useful cover for spies.

Funded by the Foreign Office, it has already received a £60 million emergency loan from the Government on top of its annual grant of £161 million. It has furloughed 18 per cent of its roughly 1,175-strong UK. workforce. It employs about 12,000 staff in 100 countries.

PCS welcomes the fact that its campaign has seen redundancies paused and additional funds allocated, and British Council management reported that the union’s campaign and political pressure was a key factor in the release of additional funding, but fears that the future of the Council is still uncertain.