Month: Aug 2020

Self-congratulatory NEC still lack any strategy on Covid-19 or pay

National Executive Committee meetings are often dominated by a series of speeches from the General Secretary, frequently taking 45 minutes, sometimes even an hour, per paper moved.

The NEC of 13.08.20 was no exception. What was surprising was that on the first substantive item of business, it took this long to move a paper on Covid-19 and organising when it did not have a single recommendation to be voted on by the NEC. Instead the time was taken up by the General Secretary earnestly thanking just about everyone he could think of for the amazing work they’ve been doing during the pandemic and then regurgitating the material in the paper section by section.

It fell to the BLN supporters who sit on the NEC to remind the General Secretary and his allies that the pandemic is not over and there is still no sign of a serious strategy from the union to ensure members are not moved back into their offices before it is safe. This view was reinforced when the General Secretary shared his recent correspondence with the Chief Operating Officer of the Civil Service, Alex Chisholm.

Aggressive in tone and short on the kind of detail that would have been useful in putting the union’s case, those in charge of national negotiations are violating a cardinal rule of trade unionism; you don’t sound aggressive until you’re ready to mean it.

Slow push back to the office continues – a fighting strategy is needed

Chisholm’s reply, essentially shrugging off everything Serwotka said, shows the Cabinet Office do not take seriously the current PCS leadership’s opposition to the slow pushing of our members back into workplaces without consideration for the continuing scientific advice that working from home is still safest. An announcement in HMRC last week that 7,000 staff will be asked to move back into offices, joining the 4,000 still there, is just the latest example of this push.

These HMRC staff will join workers from the Passport Office, in HM Courts and Tribunals Service and other parts of the civil service. Members are facing risks to their safety as a result of the failure of the government to ensure they can work from home, but they are also experiencing the failure of the current leadership of the union. The NEC has persistently failed to acknowledge the potential for collective action on health and safety grounds; each time the Civil Service has sought to move people back into offices, the NEC has insisted to union members that it must be their individual call to refuse to go back into an office.

Continuing the litany of mistakes, the management action brief published to the union’s negotiators at group level by the national union seemed to contain contradictory comments, with a focus on ensuring any return to the office was on a voluntary basis. This undermines the view being taken in a number of groups, where the union has held the line that even those who want to go back to the offices should not be allowed to unless it is a greater risk for them to be at home than to travel to and work in an office.

Broad Left forces LU-led DWP Group to call consultative ballot – get involved

BLN supporters have consistently demanded that every effort be made to mobilise collective power when disputes develop over staffing returning to their workplaces. In DWP this pressure from BLN supporters had paid off by the launching of a consultative ballot on the DWP decision to extend opening hours to 8pm and to Saturdays while the pandemic is on-going. BLN supporters welcome this ballot but have concerns at the lacklustre LU campaign to drive out the vote.

We urge all BLN supporters to make contact with their local DWP branches to give support to the ballot. DWP Group has published information that allows reps to join virtual phonebanks, to contact members in the affected Universal Credit Service Centres and Jobcentres in order to encourage them to vote. The ballot continues until 7^th September.

National campaign: pay and pensions report

The other major business discussed at the NEC was on the so-called “National Campaign”. Again, the current leadership swung retreated into endless praise of their own efforts, which have resulted in 40,000 signatures on the PCS pay petition. As a BLN supporter noted, at the current rate of signatures we will get to 100,000 trigger of a debate in parliament some time in 2022. Despite the indignant reaction from Serwotka and Left Unity a few NECs ago, when they said the petition could be an organising tool, there is no sign it is being used as such.

Serwotka’s paper on the national campaign proposed that the NEC agree to “use all available organising and campaigning avenues to increase the signature rate on the national petition”. That was the actual recommendation from these lions of the (ex) left, with no further details offered of what the leadership of the NEC had in mind, or what could be done that we aren’t already doing. The problem isn’t that not enough work is going into the petition, it’s that the petition was always a fig-leaf behind which to hide the absence of a serious campaign in pay in 2020.

Of more interest was the update on the on-going legal battles on pensions; the national union will be sharing information shortly to encourage groups, branches and members to participate in the public consultation on pensions launched by the government. BLN supporters will keep an eye for this, to ensure members’ views about their overpayments of contributions are represented and to demand the government pays up for those people who were subjected to a detriment when they were moved to the Alpha scheme.

NEC agrees BLN motion on the NHS protests

BLN supporters proposed a motion on the recent protests launched by nurses and other health workers over pay. On Saturday 8^th August, around the UK protests were organised by health workers themselves, often bypassing the official trade unions, to demand that the government change their refusal to reopen pay negotiations. NHS workers in England and Wales are subject to the last year of a three year deal, agreed well before the Covid-19 pandemic and which in any case did not correct the last decade worth of pay austerity which has seen rates of pay fall by up to 20%.

As NHS staff in Oban, Scotland put it, “Clapping doesn’t pay our bills.” NHS staff in Scotland and Northern Ireland are on different pay scales to those in England and Wales, with devolved governments having authority over pay. Nurses in Northern Ireland won a historic victory in late 2019 after taking strike action over pay, moving them towards parity with nurses in England and Wales, but still below those in Scotland. None of the nations of the UK have paid their NHS staff sufficiently to offset how much pay has dropped when set against rising prices. PCS has members in NHS Digital, which is covered by NHS pay scales; some of these members joined their nearest demo, in Leeds.

The BLN proposal gave solidarity to the demonstrations and instructed the national union to publish details of further demonstrations, to encourage members to take part, masked and socially distanced of course. This was agreed unanimously by the NEC, finally putting a nail through the NEC’s former policy of not encouraging people to join demonstrations in the current period. Further demonstrations are planned, many on the 12^th September, so if something is happening in your area and you want it publicised, contact an NEC member or the General Secretary’s office to ask for this to be put up on the website.

Sidney Stringer academy is a school in Coventry, the city where OFQUAL is based. This year 60% of teacher predicted grades at Sidney Stringer were marked down by the algorithm implemented by OFQUAL. The head, teachers and students at Sidney Stringer jointly held a protest to call on the government and OFQUAL to address this news. Roughly 150 people attended and heard stories of students whose predicted grades were all marked down, some by two grades. This was a disaster for those students who saw their futures ripped apart by an algorithm. Their anger was just.

BLN supporters and members call for solidarity with the A level students of 2020. We further applaud the united efforts of students, teachers, and similarly outraged members of the public in successfully demanding that teacher predicted grades be reinstated. The power and leverage available to us when united in solidarity against injustice cannot be overstated. The victory of this campaign in forcing a policy U-turn from the Tories – despite their 80 seat majority – shows what can be done when we come together to fight for what is right. This U-turn comes as a direct result of worker (and future worker) led organising and bargaining. It brings to mind the youth-fronted movement on climate action that shines a light directly on the hypocrisy and savagery of the ruling capitalist class.

This fiasco is just the latest in a series of mistakes made by the government in handling the COVID-19 crisis. For months students and teachers have been raising concerns about how grades would be awarded this year, and teachers were instructed to use mock exams and work provided before the lockdown to predict grades. These predicted grades would have meant that record levels of students would pass A levels, especially at A* to C. Politicians took the decision that the pass rates should increase by roughly 1%. OFQUAL were forced to deliver this and did so with an algorithm. Fairness to the students affected was never factored into this political decision.

The algorithm is clearly biased and discriminatory. It makes a mockery of Boris Johnson’s empty promise of levelling up across the country. Yet the algorithm is a symptom of wider unfairness within the education system. State schools have seen their budgets cut to the point that Heads are forced to decide whether to spend money on equipment or wages, a decision no educator should ever be faced with. It means that teachers are managing increasing class sizes and are working untold extra hours, unpaid, to mark homework and produce class plans. In this context it’s no surprise that students from poorer backgrounds have little chance to close the educating gap with those students from rich backgrounds, who are able to attend private schools with adequate funding and to access additional tutors.

Of course, whilst living in a society marked by class-based inequality and top-down elitist control, it is hard to envisage an education system that wouldn’t inherently reflect this. The Tory fetishization of “it all comes down to this” performance in end of year exams disproportionately favours children from wealthy backgrounds, but so too does continuous assessment and coursework. While the latter is certainly closer to fairness and would be a positive step, it is not possible to eradicate the gulf between advantaged and disadvantaged students until we address the vast wealth inequality which is a core tenet of capitalism. BLN supporters and members call for all schools to be free and available to all students, for a fully funded and publicly run education system and for exam boards to be brought into public ownership.

The BLN notes with concern that at the time of writing GCSE results have recently been released and are at a record high, with some schools and headteachers considering appealing against them. In order to avoid repeating the same mistakes as with A-Levels, any and all review of GCSE grades must be conducted in full consultation with trade unions and with the wellbeing of students as the guiding and overarching central principle.

The government has promised a public inquiry into its handling of the COVID-19 crisis in due course. Past and present inquiries, including the ongoing inquiry into Grenfell, suggest this won’t be handled fairly. The PCS NEC and the wider Trade Union movement needs to call for any inquiry to be conducted by the trade union movement to ensure the government is held to account for its decisions. This includes reviewing the ministerial decisions on the way A level and GCSE results have been determined this year, which was of course fully in keeping with the government’s elitist ideology around education.

We stand in solidarity with PCS members working in Ofqual, trying their hardest to deliver yet another flawed government policy in the most of extreme of circumstances and we must not tolerate these workers being used as political pawns in any inquiry. It is government that must be held to account, not the hardworking Civil and Public Servants who deliver on their behalf. We encourage PCS members who feel able to do so to join socially distanced rallies and protests for this results debacle, and to write to their government representatives in support of school students.

DWP PCS members in all the Jobcentres and 21 Universal Credit Service Centres must vote YES in the ballot which starts Monday 17th August. This will give a very clear message to management, to stop their plans to open workplaces until 8pm and Saturdays and bring back conditionality.

The threat to open these workplaces into the evenings and all Saturdays shows no regard for PCS members, who have worked flat out to deliver services to the public in the pandemic and ensure the massive influx of people making claims to benefit have all received payments. We have achieved this with only 60% of our members in the workplace and our members at home have had to put up with delays and issues getting the kit to work from a government department that was the worst prepared with IT equipment for their workforce. All adding extra pressure on our members delivering services.

We have seen the fiasco of rolling out the re-opening of Jobcentres to meet the Tory ministers’ aim of making things look like they are getting back to normal but with scant regard for the health and safety of our members.

There is no reason why we could not continue to provide the bulk of our support remotely over the phone or digitally which would help keep our members and the public safe.

The plans to open jobcentres later and on Saturdays are even more flawed putting everyone further at risk. But also harming the services that can be provided during the peak working times during the week.

During the pandemic there has been flexibility to concentrate the opening hours to the public to normal office hours so that we can focus the limited resources and staffing to when there is the most demand for support. This has helped our members deal with the issues caused by the pandemic and allow them to juggle their personal issues and deal with the limited public transport. This should continue as we are far from out of the woods in dealing with the impact of Coronavirus.

The concept of having the potential to have opening hours until 7.30pm or on Saturdays was to have the flexibility if required to offer services to the public who need support from the DWP but would struggle to access these services during the normal business hours 9-5 .The collective agreement is clear that operating hours should be directly related to demand from the public and not just implemented for the sake of it.

With the economy in recession and large numbers of jobs at risk – the vast bulk of the demand from the public will remain during the day. Any move to stretch our members’ working patterns to cover longer working days and Saturday opening will damage the services to the public when they are most needed.
With such a difficult economic climate the focus should still be on supporting the public and we remain opposed to the return to conditionality. The priorities of paying benefit and supporting the public whilst keeping our members safe must remain.

Management can be made to back off. This will require a huge turnout and YES vote

Branches and reps have the key role in talking to members to encourage them to demonstrate their opposition collectively to management’s plans by voting YES.

Management’s plans are Unsafe – Unnecessary – Unacceptable

On 19^th July, the Government went public with an announcement about 10 emergency courts to be opened across England and Wales, in order to deal with the backlog of 480,000 cases facing Magistrates’ courts due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Emergency courts will be opened in Telford, Stevenage, Swansea, Leeds, Middlesbrough, Chichester, Peterborough, Fleetwood (Lancs) and two in London. This was announced scant days after PCS indicated to members that no details or proposals were available yet, showing the contempt the employer has for the union.

The government has emphasised that the emergency venues – and there may yet be more to come – will only deal with civil, family, tribunal and non-custodial criminal cases, but it is not clear what measures will be in place to protect staff and the public.

Covid-19 and protecting members

Protecting staff and the users of the justice system from violence and aggression of any kind as well as from Covid-19 must be the top priority. In addition to proper security measures, this means social distancing, adequate protective equipment and full risk assessments of buildings by union-appointed Health and Safety reps.

Given that the government wanted these venues to begin hearing cases from this week, it is far from clear that any of this has been done, and, unfortunately the lack of leadership from the union to local union reps and members will likely discourage members from fully pressing the case to keep themselves protected.

There will also be questions from staff about longer travelling time, more expensive journeys, new costs such as car parking in areas which do not have this and other mundane but important aspects of changes like this. At the end of the day, changes made by employers should not come with a cost dumped on to staff.

The silence on the PCS website is deafening. The union’s website is a major public resource that can be accessed by members to find out what is happening, and by non-members to find out why they should join the union, and there’s nothing on there to explain how the union is ensuring the employer looks after staff.

It could be that this complete absence of a campaigning approach is why the employer didn’t feel the need to properly consult the union before announcing the new courts. The

current state of negotiation and consultation remains unclear.

Wider reform agenda continues despite crisis

At the end of June, the government announced an additional £142 million to refurbish courts across England and Wales, which is welcome, but this is happening parallel with a steady retreat from local court services; 77 are still liable to close as the Ministry of Justice follows DWP and HMRC in shutting local offices.

Outrageously, one is in the process of closing even as the government is looking for emergency accommodation for courts elsewhere. Consultation on the closure of Medway County and Family Court was announced on 14^th July, with an early announcement to staff slipped on to the staff intranet on 10^th July without any consultation with the union.

In HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), the employer continues to roll out its pet project, the Reform Programme. Having learned nothing from the disastrous roll out of Digital Mark Up (DMU), the employer is repeating the exercise on the Common Platform. These new procedures will pile a great deal of stress on staff, especially Legal Advisers, at a time when members are already at breaking point. New programmes that will put strain on members must be halted during the crisis and subject to an independent evaluation of their impact. The union must mobilise to demand this.

Pay 2020

Meanwhile staff are still waiting to find out just how badly they are to be let down on pay this year; if the 14p offered to MOJ cleaners is anything to go by, it’ll be pretty bad. Here too, however, there’s little move towards a campaign in the different component parts of the PCS Justice Sector, which includes MOJ proper, HM Prisons and Probation Service, HMCTS, the Crown Prosecution Service and other areas.

In one sense this is understandable; the national union has already publicly announced there will be no pay campaign this year, aside from the pay petition that launched (and launched late, it should be pointed out) on 20^th July.

Broad Left Network supporters are hard at work encouraging members to sign the petition – because several hundred thousand signatures on a petition and the debate in Parliament that this will trigger is better than nothing. But we are under no illusions; this will not deliver a pay rise and it will serve to do precisely zero when it comes to organising and mobilising the union. Yet this is the strategy of the Left Unity/Democrat leadership of the union.

Despite this abdication of leadership, the different employer groups within the union still have a responsibility to fight on pay. The national demand, agreed by Conference, of 10%, must be put to employers and groups should consider balloting for rejection of derisory offers – and especially on any offers tied to changes of terms and conditions, or even consider an indicative ballot for action on pay to mobilise members and provide a concrete test of the mood on pay.