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Striking Twickenham job centre staff 'fear closure'
9:00am Saturday 13th March 2010
Workers on strike outside Twickenham job centre have expressed concern for the future of the site.
Members of the Public and Commercial Service Union (PCS) staged a 48-hour walkout this week over plans to cap redundancy pay.
But Janet Fordrey and Paul Harwood, part of a picket line outside the job centre in London Road, said they had other concerns as well.
The action was called as it is thought workers could lose a third of their redundancy entitlement over cuts under the civil service compensation scheme.
Staff in courts, ports, job and tax centres walked out, although Government figures claimed the number on strike was only 81,000 of the union’s 200,000 members.
Ms Fordrey confirmed a cut in redundancy pay was an issue for members, but since the centre was rebranded as Jobcentre Plus, many of its functions – such as taking on new clients and dealing with financial queries – had been taken away, with residents having to travel to Kingston.
Mr Harwood said: “Kingston is now like a super job centre, and half of the work from Wimbledon has gone to Kingston.
“Our fear is eventually this office will close. When they introduced Jobcentre Plus they didn’t realise unemployment would rise so much, they can’t keep up with the demand.
“We are about 40 people, understaffed and a lot of the staff are on a six-month contract.
“This is the only office in the borough and the social security office in Heath Road has closed too. If this went I don’t know what would happen.” A Jobcentre Plus spokeswoman said: “There are no plans to close Twickenham job centre. We have almost doubled the number of staff we have in Twickenham since we opened in 2005, so there are more advisers offering one-to-one help and support. During the strike action all our job centres remained open.”
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