CIVIL SERVANTS at a jobcentre in Buckinghamshire called for better pay and conditions on the biggest strike day over a decade.

In High Wycombe, members of the Public and Commercial Services Union took to the picket line at the DWP Jobcentre Plus on Oxford Road to protest about low pay and “gruelling” conditions.

The civil servants joined teachers, train drivers and university lecturers across the country and in Buckinghamshire on the first day of February strikes.  

They said some staff at the Jobcentre had stayed at home in solidarity, while colleagues, who received Universal Credit to top up their salary, couldn’t afford to lose a days pay to picket.

Work coach and PCS union rep Claudine Hayward said: “We are so badly paid. People think civil servants are on huge amount of pay but we are just above minimum pay to be honest. We are here helping people.

“We need to be paid our worth. We are professionals. We’re in a job to help people to get into work, but our job is far, far more than that.”

Another colleague, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “We are the machinery that keeps the country moving forward. As DWP workers we deal with people at grass root level, we ring up surgeries and mental health services.

“It’s a very gruelling job. We get spat at, abuse almost on daily basis but we’re still there. Not many people could do these jobs.

She wished government ministers, who were on three times their salary, would “try and do our job for a day.”

Jane Pricktoe started working at the Jobcentre in 2009. When she worked part-time while looking after her ill dad, her salary was “okay”.

But then new contracts demanding evening and weekend work were introduced in 2014, while pay didn't keep up, she said. 

Jane said: “Most of our customers are pleasant, but we do get customers, who have mental health and other issues.

“But on a daily basis we do get some abuse and some difficult customers.

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“We do have security, who have to intervene.

“We don’t always feel very safe, but we do still have to deal with customers the best we can.

“People have been threatened with guns and knives.”

The PCS said despite the "difficult conditions" during the Covid pandemic, public sector workers haven't had a pay rise to match inflation for "over a decade."