Strike Action Disrupts Tax Return Processing At HMRC

by Robert Lee, Tax-News.com, London

02 August 2006

The Public and Commercial Services Union claimed that the processing of tax affairs had been severely disrupted earlier this week after 8,000 HM Revenue and Customs employees staged a 24-hour walk-out in protest against new working practices.

Over 90% of PCS members stayed away from work on July 31, affecting the processing of self-assessment returns at ten large HMRC processing offices, which included: Glasgow, Newcastle, Salford, Liverpool, Wrexham, Cardiff, Portsmouth, Leicester and Northants, Bradford and Edinburgh.

The union is fighting the introduction of new working practices known as 'LEAN' which, it argues, will lead to a de-skilling of the work force, excessive individual monitoring and exposure to repetitive strain injury. It has also emerged that up to 12,000 jobs at the tax department may be cut.

The union had postponed an earlier one day strike scheduled for 14 July after an interim agreement was reached with management. However, the PCS claimed that HMRC management reneged on key elements of this deal, leading to the union to accuse HMRC of "bad faith and of deliberately seeking a confrontation".

"The magnificent show of support today illustrates the depth of anger that senior management have provoked amongst staff by railroading through outmoded working practices that reduce people to little more than robots," Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, commented on Monday.

An HMRC spokesman told BBC News that the action was "unnecessary and unwarranted" but said that disruption would be kept to a minimum. The walk-out did not affect those attempting to contact the tax department by telephone.

The union plans to continue its protest with an overtime ban.

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