Plaid Cymru AM Leanne Wood showed her support for the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union strike by joining picket lines in Cardiff Bay and the Rhondda.
The South Wales Central AM also spoke during a union rally within a lecture theatre at Cardiff Museum on the first day of a 48-hour stoppage in response to the UK Government’s plans to downgrade the redundancy rights of civil servants.
At the rally, Leanne shared a platform with Katrine Williams, the Wales Chair of the PCS, Ioan Bellin, Plaid Cymru’s prospective candidate for Pontypridd and John McInally, the vice president of the union.
Hundreds of thousands of members have withdrawn their labour over changes to the civil service compensation scheme which the union claims will see staff lose up to a third of their entitlements. The union says workers will effectively lose thousands of pounds if they are forced out of their job during the anticipated cull of public services after the General Election.
Leanne Wood AM, who chairs the all-party PCS group at the National Assembly, met with workers outside the Companies House building in Parc Nantgarw and then joined the picket line outside the Welsh Assembly building in Cardiff Bay. Plaid Cymru AMs agreed not to cross the picket line during the two days of industrial action.
She said: “It is simply unacceptable to allow the UK Government to force some of the lowest paid workers to pay for the mistakes of greedy bankers. They caused the economic crisis, which created the public sector deficit, which is now being paid for by cuts to workers terms and conditions.”
During her rally speech, Leanne said: “When you are thinking about the bigger picture, there is a lot at stake with this dispute, and that is why it is important that you are prepared to fight what the UK Government are trying to do.”
She added: “We could be operating under a Tory Government at UK level within two months. We all know, from their statements, that they are keen to cut the deficit as quickly as possible.
“We can expect them to take a slash and burn approach to our public services. This move helps them to cuts jobs on the cheap. It is utterly irresponsible to make the Tories’ jobs easy for them. That is another reason why this dispute has to be successful.”
