The union has called on the Treasury and government departments to honour the due dates for pay settlements or compensate staff for the loss.
The call comes on a key settlement date for many civil service pay agreements, but virtually no offers have been tabled for 2008 and several are still outstanding from last year.
Prospect’s Deputy General Secretary Dai Hudd said: “Over 90% of Prospect members should have had a pay settlement for this year by now, but we are still waiting for Treasury clearance of dozens of pay remits across the civil service. Our members are reaching breaking point. The civil service pay system has virtually seized up.”
This sense of frustration is powerfully demonstrated in a new Prospect survey of attitudes to pay, skills and working conditions completed by more than 5,000 members.
Initial findings show that lack of pay progression is the single biggest cause of dissatisfaction, compounded by derisory pay rises.
In 2007, over one third of Prospect’s civil service members received an increase of less than 2%* – the government’s own target for public sector pay.
“This adds insult to injury and means that civil servants fare even worse than counterparts in other parts of the public sector, where progression costs are separated from the basic pay award,” said Hudd.
Prospect members are also angry about the lack of opportunity for career development. Many specialists report being stuck for years at the bottom end of their pay band despite good performance reviews, leaving them with no career option except to abandon their professional specialism for general management.
Prospect Head of Research, Sue Ferns, said: “Specialists are not always at the forefront of public attention – but government cannot function without their skills, experience and expertise.They have an essential role in times of crisis and in tackling the major challenges currently facing society.
"This is what truly motivates our members, so it is an indictment of the government’s current approach that half of them now think that their best chance of career development is to take up a post in the private sector.”
Hudd added: “Civil Service pay is broken but must be fixed. Prospect stands ready to engage in genuine dialogue about pay reform, as we have seen in other parts of the public sector.”
The full results of Prospect’s survey will be published on September 5.
* This is linked to the 2% target for the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), which is actually running at 3.8%, and RPI (the real rate of inflation) at 4.6%.