Criticisms of 'bonus' payments made to Ministry of Defence civilian staff are very unfair and misleading, said the FDA, main union representing senior managers and professionals in the civil service.
Its general secretary Jonathan Baume said: "This criticism is very unfair. We are talking about tens of thousands of people working very hard to support our troops. Many of these payments are made to people serving alongside the military – in Iraq and Afghanistan. They include a very wide range of technical and professional staff."
He also criticised ministers for their lack of clarity regarding so-called bonuses.
"Ministers have insisted on similar schemes in most departments, and it is about time ministers went on record defending the arrangements that they put in place."
Baume said that the payments themselves are not bonuses in the way that most people would understand them.
"They are non-pensionable, are not carried forward to the next year and are taken out of the overall pay pot set by ministers.
"This means that, over recent years, pay levels for civil servants in the Ministry of Defence have been depressed.
He added: "Over the past 25 years successive Conservative and Labour Governments have handed over to civilians many jobs that were previously done by members of the armed forces.
"These are jobs that in many countries are still done by the armed forces – and it costs substantially more to employ the armed forces for work that civilians could do."
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
