E60 for WHILE public sector workers demonstrate against the five percent policy and cash limits, top civil servants will be deciding in secret what the level of their wages will be in two years time. SCLYAHES And any attempt to tell parliament or the public what they are discussing would be an offence against the Official Ten public sector unions make this clear in a pamphlet published this week, highlighting the secret and undemocratic way that the state draws up its they In particular they look in detail at how the civil service draws up the process. annual public expenditure white paper - a subject that sounds dry and boring, but which shows how bureaucracy and secrecy are used to make key decisions on cuts in jobs and services.
This week should see the publication of the white paper on public spending stage.
with orecasts for tac following four years. This, we are told, was decided on by the cabinet last autumn, and will be discussed and In fact the process started at the end of 1977, when top Treasury officials sent round guidelines to government departments on what they should be planning to spend in the 12 months Then, from January to early March last year, the government departments drew up their plans. From April to May, the departments negotiated their plans with the Treasury.
All this time, the negotiations and There was no discussion in public, or even in the NAPO, And no chance for trade unions or public opinion to have any say on the level of spending on housing, roads, Even when the civil servants gave their report in for cabinet discussion last summer, and ministers discussed it in secret over the autumn, there was no room for pressure outside the civil All the estimates were drawn up on the Treasury's own figures for how fast public spending should grow and at what rate public sector workers' wages should rise deeply political decisions, made in effect by top civil The system works to make ministers compete with each other for a slice of the existing cake, rather than challenge the assumptions behind the documents the permanent secretaries give them.
The unions' answer is to abolish all secrecy in the process, and have all the key decisions voted on in parliament;
WHOLE union decision-making in all stages of the Having more union officials sitting on joint committees with civil servants is not going to do much to offset the pressures for cuts from the city and the International Monetary Fund.
But the greater the publicity at every the better the chances of mobilising mass opposition any further cuts in services and jobs.
The unions make the valid point that existing spending programmes and targets are drawn up only in terms of cost, not of the impact on the services and the quality of our lives. Instead they call for the impact on the public to be made clear whenever CUES are proposed.
*If increased infant mortality is to be the price for keeping within the forecast public sector borrowing requirement, it is preferable that the implication be openly recognised, they say True. But what action is proposed by the leaders of the ten unions involved [ASTMS, COHSE, CPSA, NALGO, NATFHE NUPE.
NUT, and SCPS)? None, it seems apart from forwarding the report to the economic committee of the TUC.
The union leaders would deal a mighty blow against state secrecy and the cuts if they announced that their unions, with all their strength in central and local government, would use all their power to defend of their members who 'blew the whistle' on the secret plans by making them public Socialist Challer, e 18 January 1979 page9