A BALLOT for non-co-operation with the Tories’ hated workfare scheme was scuppered yesterday when civil servants voted to pursue negotiation instead.

Bootle delegate to the PCS annual conference Phil Dickens slammed HM Revenue and Customs’s involvement in the scheme — formally movement to work — which he branded “just another form of the insidious workfare policy, aimed at offering (benefits) claimants as free labour to employers.”

PCS delegates recounted horror stories of young people being sent to work in their departments with only their benefits as reward.

One tax office worker said she had seen claimants with “no interest in working for public services … with degrees in economics or fashion” placed in her office.

The scheme was “undermining the terms and conditions of existing staff,” she said.

But the PCS executive, which affirmed its opposition to workfare, raised concerns that a call to ballot members “for non-co-operation” and “a work slowdown” could come into conflict with the law if it went beyond a traditional work-to-rule.

A call to remit the motion was overwhelmingly carried.