File photo of Jobcentre Plus office building in Galashiels. As-announced Wednesday evening, 3,500 staff from UK Jobcentre plus call centres engaged in a 48-hour walkout. Centres in Newport and Glasgow were picketed by members Thursday and Friday mornings as part of a coordinated strike at seven of the thirty centres handling benefits and unemployment-related queries for the UK public. Wikinews spoke to Katrine Williams, one of the representatives of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), and a member of the Civil Service since 1991, to establish the grievances leading to the public-sector industrial action. The number provided for the public to call in relation to benefits is an 0845 number, usually charged at a local call rate when dialled from a landline within the UK; for many claimants, they may only have a mobile phone and be subject to higher charges, or even in a position where a benefit payment has been delayed, and this is their sole contact with the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) when they may be in financial difficulty. In late December, Brendan Barber of the Trades Union Congress warned that 2011 may be a year where the UK faces widespread public-sector industrial action. £81 billion (US$128 billion) is set to be cut from the UK's expenditure, with the possible loss of over a quarter million public-sector jobs.
File photo of Jobcentre Plus office building in Galashiels. As-announced Wednesday evening, 3,500 staff from UK call centres engaged in a 48-hour walkout. Centres in Newport and Glasgow were picketed by members Thursday and Friday mornings as part of a coordinated strike at seven of the thirty centres handling benefits and unemployment-related queries for the UK public. Wikinews spoke to Katrine Williams, one of the representatives of the (PCS), and a member of the Civil Service since 1991, to establish the grievances leading to the public-sector industrial action. The number provided for the public to call in relation to benefits is an 0845 number, usually charged at a local call rate when dialled from a landline within the UK; for many claimants, they may only have a mobile phone and be subject to higher charges, or even in a position where a benefit payment has been delayed, and this is their sole contact with the (DWP) when they may be in financial difficulty. In late December, Brendan Barber of the warned that 2011 may be a year where the UK faces widespread public-sector industrial action. £81 billion (US$128 billion) is set to be cut from the UK's expenditure, with the possible loss of over a quarter million public-sector jobs.
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Jobcentre plus
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Public and Commercial Services Union
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Department of Work and Pensions
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Trades Union Congress