Month: Aug 2021

The National Shop Stewards Network has a proud record of mobilising the rank and file of the trade union movement to put demands on the TUC for the fighting programme that is needed by workers. The 12th NSSN annual lobby of the TUC will take place at noon on 12th September. PCS is one of the many unions affiliated to the NSSN. And we recognise the important role the NSSN has in supporting PCS members whenever they are in dispute and on picket lines.

The lobby will be virtual again this year with the TUC congress also taking place online. It will be an open forum for union reps to have our say from the fight for workplace safety, to defending our jobs and hard won pay and conditions, to stopping yet more attacks and privatisation of the NHS. The BLN is encouraging PCS reps to attend this lobby to have our say in building the resistance to the attacks.

It has never been so important to build the fight back to the attacks. The pandemic has seen workers fight for their lives and increasingly our livelihoods as bosses and the Government unleash an offensive to make us pay for the crisis, including the public sector pay freeze, cuts in our living standards, attacks on our services, putting our members at risk, as well as the widespread attack on jobs and conditions with fire and rehire and union busting. This is a great opportunity to get union reps together from all the unions fighting the government’s attacks on our pay across the public sector and work to build a coordinated campaign to meet our demands for a full pay rise to address the years of pay restraint.

Workers are fighting back, with a strike wave that has seen important victories. Come and hear about the action that is taking place from union leaders and shopfloor workers on the front line who are leading the fightback.

All Welcome

Confirmed speakers so far:

Sarah Woolley BFAWU General Secretary, 

Joe Simpson POA Deputy General Secretary

Joe Kirby RMT NEC

Sharon Graham UNITE General Secretary

Facebook event

Zoom details:-
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86116774093?pwd=OVNvZldISGozKzd6U0QvL1hBWEI3Zz09

Meeting ID: 861 1677 4093
Passcode: NSSN2021

DWP continues to ignore safety of its own workforce.  It has instructed managers to complete risk assessments in Jobcentres to push staff, working from home, and claimants, back into the offices. This is a pre-planned cynical attack on safety, driven by a Tory ideology more interested in profit and pressurising claimants off the books.  DWP, in an act of utter opportunism and cynicism has utilised the peak holiday period – knowing many PCS reps will be on leave. The Left Unity led Group leadership have a responsibility to act quickly against this overt attack from the employer. A collective response is needed that doesn’t abandon reps to manage safety in isolation.

Legal duty

Return to work and office arrangements should be agreed with PCS. The DWP has a legal duty to protect both the workforce and the public who visit our offices. This includes preventing the transmission of covid-19. The employer must carry out a health and safety risk assessment for any planned changes.  Regulation 4a of the Safety Representatives and Safety Committees regulations requires the employer to consult safety reps in good time. “In good time” means they must factor in time for safety reps to receive information, express views and importantly take account of PCS views before making decisions on required safety measures.

Severe Risk

Despite the vaccination, covid-19 still poses a significant risk to public health. The number of cases is rising – over 200,000 positive test results, 635 deaths and nearly 5½ thousand hospitalisations in the past week.  The risks of contracting covid-19 remain severe. Increased risk of covid means increased risk of long covid. A significant number of long covid victims end up with long-term conditions which can have a severe impact on individual’s ability to undertake day to day activities and even work.  17.8% of workers who contracted covid-19 are no longer working because of the impact of long covid.  It disproportionately impacts on working age adults and even more so on women. The way to prevent this is to stop the spread of the virus; the way to reduce the spread of the virus is to stay at home.

No-one should contract covid from working in or being called into DWP workplaces

Poor ventilation and enclosed spaces mean that indoor spaces remain the riskiest environment. The immediate consideration must be the elimination of the hazard of contracting covid-19. This means continued working from home. Where workplace attendance is agreed, 2m social distancing must be maintained, ventilation must meet the necessary standards, good hygiene levels and face coverings worn.

DWP Management attempting to tear up safety measures

Management’s revised covid-19 JCFRA and checklist documents have been updated to reflect the government guidance in England. Management have removed all reference to 2m social distancing and instead refer in passing that close contact should be avoided – a recipe for chaos and disaster. And completely ignores the Welsh Government guidance that physical distancing is required and this should be 2 metres wherever this is practicable.

HSE guidance is clear: measures already in place should continue, including no desk sharing, proper cleaning of workstations between users, one-way systems maintained, screened desks used for interviewing the public, flexibility in start and finish times to allow for safe travel.

Response is Pitiful – Group Wide Industrial Action is Needed on Safety

Unfortunately, the PCS Group leadership has yet again been found wanting. Whilst they have been meeting the employer, they have singularly failed to prepare members and reps for action if our safety demands are not met. They have squandered vital time and achieved little in talks. Members’ confidence must be built including the confidence to take the necessary action to win. The Left Unity led GEC have demonstrated an abject failure of leadership by kicking the can down the road, relying on meaningless surveys, abandoning reps to fight alone and doing little to build any serious campaign.  How has the GEC used the 74% indicative jobcentre safety ballot result in favour of action to build the required response? They haven’t.

Interim Measures for Branches and Regions

In the meantime, whilst the GEC fails to lead, we cannot abandon members and reps in the face of these attacks from the employer. Reps should call emergency branch and regional committees to assess the situation. Member’s meetings should be held to challenge the attacks, publicise and take action if required under H&S rights and make clear the support for the demand for a collective group wide response which must be put if management don’t step back. Safety for all is a key issue to link up with organisations that represent and support claimants to develop a joint campaign of action.

Discuss and agree the following motion to help put the pressure on the Group leadership to lead:

“This meeting recognises the major attack on safety to staff and claimants through changes to DWP Covid Safety measures. This meeting instructs the PCS DWP GEC to build the necessary campaign, including a statutory ballot for strike action, if the employer refuses to put safety of members first”

PCS needs to hold the line on safety with the following demands:

• Minimal staffing levels agreed and only to deliver essential work that cannot be done from home.
• Retention of all covid-19 safety measures to stop onward transmission of covid in the workplace.
• Keep 2m social distancing at all times.
• Maintain extra cleaners doing touchpoint cleaning in DWP sites
• Deep cleaning following positive cases.
• Ensure all indoor spaces are well ventilated with fresh air throughout the day, using CO2 monitors.
• Face coverings to be worn in all public spaces and when moving around workplaces
• Flexibility for workers to travel when it is quietest and continued flexibility about working hours.
• Full risk assessments to continue and kept under review with the union health and safety reps
• Individual risk assessments for workers with underlying health conditions, clinically extremely vulnerable workers, black workers and for those not yet vaccinated. And results fully taken into account.
• Full support and reasonable adjustments for workers suffering from long covid – sick leave written off for pay and discipline purposes
• All staff who have been in close contact with covid cases or have symptoms must self-isolate.
• No use of quick lateral flow tests to reduce self-isolation time

Support for transport unions’ demands for face coverings and social distancing to be reinstated on public transport.

Personal statement from Dave Bartlett

I am on the MOJ Group Executive and a member of the Broad Left Network. I am opposed to the proposed MOJ pay deal and attach to this article a copy of the leaflet we are issuing to encourage a NO vote.

We’ve waited 2 years without any pay increase for this offer and to be honest its delivered very little. 10.3% over 3 years is not a lot especially as inflation is running at 3%. and many members will lose out in their conditions of employment.

This is the reality of concession bargaining. The pay offer is an average computation, depending on who you are and where you are.  The lowest grades(AOs, AAS etc) do benefit, although the offer includes adjustments to fit in with the legal requirements of minimum and living wage. The  scourge of regional pay does come to an end as employees now come under 2 brackets of a London wage and a new national wage but a number of members will suffer a loss from these arrangements. 

To pay for the gains in this deal there is a cut in allowances, and overtime, affecting many such as DSOs, legal advisers, bailiffs . Those members on 35 and 36 hours (mainly in the GMB union) will have to move to a standard 37 hour week and will receive a non consolidated compensation package. 

This is an offer subject to collective bargaining. In other words it will need to be accepted by all the unions and will apply to all members of staff.

This is an offer I feel we can’t support. Some grades may gain in the short term  but sacrificing employment conditions is not my idea of what unions should be doing. 

At the end of the day this is the price union members are paying for sectoral concession bargaining and above all the abysmal failure of the national leadership in abandoning any notion of a national pay campaign. 

Five members of the current GEC sit on the NEC and supported a no strings 10% national pay claim for all PCS members in 2021. This deal comes nowhere near our union’s claim so why are they supporting it ?

And why has it all been done in secret ? Until the last minute hardly anything was known about the deal and then at  an emergency August meeting of the Executive (which I missed as I was on leave) they recommended support ( PCS Democrats/Left Unity Alliance) with a really short period of consultation before the ballot starts on the 20th August. 

I have written to the GEC calling for the ballot to be put back to give a chance to all members to have a say and to see where the balance is between winners and losers.

If the deal goes through in reality then the MOJ together with HMRC is another section taken out of national bargaining  for the future. We should take a stand now to stop this happening . Demand from the MOJ and national union leadership a campaign to unite members around this year’s 10% claim and the action needed to secure it.

The dispute at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) over COVID safety is now in its fifth month.

Whereas only a skeleton staff of around 250 was required to attend the workplace during the first wave of the pandemic, over 2,000 of the Agency’s 5,500 strong workforce had been forced to return last September making a serious outbreak during the second wave almost inevitable.

After balloting members in March this year, PCS embarked on a strategy of prolonged targeted strike action, bringing out selected groups of members at different times and paying them £40 a day strike pay. Originally, the main demand of the union was to drastically reduce the numbers required to attend the workplace, by offering more homeworking. However, this has since been amended to focus on a demand for agreement on a phased, controlled return to the workplace when it is safe to do so.

The employer made an offer in late May which included commitment to an agreed timetable to return to the workplace, as well as a one-off financial payment of £200 to all staff and 2 days flexi credit. It appears that this offer would have been recommended to members to end the dispute, but the offer was withdrawn at the last minute due to intervention at ministerial level. It is evident that a political decision was made to take on the union rather than to work for a settlement.

The targeted action is continuing with the Drivers Medical Group on strike for the whole of August. Mark Serwotka pledged back in May that PCS was prepared to fight on for months to come if necessary. However, under the anti-union legislation, there must be a new ballot to renew the mandate after 6 months and this is due in September. There will also be a consultative ballot from 11^th August to build for the statutory ballot and it is essential that there is a big majority for continuing the action.

In the meantime, DVLA has been unilaterally returning more staff to the workplace with no action being taken to prevent this.

Supporters of the Broad Left Network have consistently put forward suggestions with the aim of supporting and strengthening the action. BLN supporters have advocated:-

• Decisive action by collective use of S44 back in December/January when the outbreak occurred rather than wait until March to ballot with action only commencing in April,
• Escalating the targeted action to include all DVLA members. It was the threat of such action that led to management’s offer in May, but the action was never carried out and has not been revived since. It is unlikely that targeted action will be enough to bring the dispute to a satisfactory conclusion. The targeted action should be linked to a move to an all – out strike if management do not agree to the union’s demands.
• Accompany the strike action with an overtime ban. The union has not called for an overtime ban at any point in the dispute.
• Working from home to be the default position with the necessary investment in technology to enable this. Any exceptions to be agreed with PCS. This might include critical work which cannot be delivered from home, personal and domestic reasons where the risk to the individual is greater at home than if they were in the workplace.
• Challenge DVLA’s punitive sick absence regime that treats sick absence including COVID related absence as a disciplinary offence. COVID related absence must not count towards the trigger points for disciplinary action.
• Stop the forced return to the workplace now taking place by deploying collective S44 notices. Increased DVLA staffing levels will make for an unsafe workplace. Workers have the right to refuse to put themselves in an unsafe environment and the union needs to intervene. DVLA cannot be allowed to win the dispute by simply returning staff to work unchallenged.

BLN supporters are critical of the way aspects of this dispute have been handled by the LU leadership, but we do so in a constructive way with the intention of strengthening the position of PCS and the members at DVLA who have responded magnificently throughout. It is unusual in that the Left Unity leadership of PCS is directly running the dispute, with zoom meetings for members chaired by the President Fran Heathcote and addressed by General Secretary Mark Serwotka. This national intervention was prompted by headline media coverage of a major COVID outbreak with over 500 cases and one fatality at DVLA last Winter. There have now been over 650 cases in total.

The focus now must be on winning the consultative ballot and the statutory ballot that hopefully will follow. It is important that DVLA members know that support for their action is as strong as ever. Please send messages of support to responseteam@pcs.org.uk.

Donations to Fighting Fund Levy, ref DVLA, sort code 60-83-01, account number 20331490.

Dave Warren

ARMS NC member and former DVLA activist