On Thursday 31st March, union reps from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) met together by Zoom to discuss the announcement of 48 office closures. We have previously reported on the first 43 closures, announced on 17th March, affecting potentially 8,000 staff. On 30th March, 5 more were added with less than 24 hours’ notice to the union. More than 400 staff are affected by the new wave, in Brighton, Burton, Liverpool and Hyde.
The response from the current leadership of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, drawn from an organisation calling itself “Left Unity”, left a lot to be desired. Multiple union branches with offices directly hit by the announcements, and potentially with jobs at risk, were not given any support from the union’s Group Executive Committee (GEC). This included sites like Walsall which have since organised their own all-members meeting with a view to preparing to fight back. Response from members has been positive.
On 17th March itself, the day of the announcements, the union’s leadership issued a belated briefing, well after management-led announcements had taken place. This failed to give a clear steer to union reps and members across the affected areas; it did not announce any serious strategy to oppose the closures or to save jobs. It did not link the question of closures and jobs to other major issues in DWP: pay, temporary staff, Covid-safety or workloads.
Since then, despite this lacklustre response from DWP Group leadership in PCS, Broad Left Network supporters in the union have been working hard to build a grassroots’ response to the announcements.
A meeting on official time to discuss office closures
Thursday’s meeting involved 6 hours of paid official time for reps to be “consulted” on the closures by the PCS leadership. Every thinking rep in DWP immediately wondered, “What does DWP have to gain by giving reps time to meet?” The contents of the meeting were sadly far from surprising, and they give away exactly what DWP had to gain.
After opening remarks by the Group President, who sternly told reps not to offer ideas on what they thought the union should do, negotiators gave several presentations on the state of discussions with DWP. Chat functions on Zoom were disabled and after a controlled Q&A, reps were divided up into regions to give members’ views on the announcements.
Feedback from these sessions was tightly controlled, with only GEC members speaking for the remainder of the meeting. The result was exactly what the GEC and DWP each hoped to produce; reports which overwhelmingly commented upon secondary issues such as travel, excess fares, exit packages etc., but which downplayed any chance of fighting back.
This is what DWP had to gain – and in this the union’s leadership under PCS “Left Unity” has been the pawn of the employer. Better preparation by the GEC, who were told of the announcements on 15th March, could have avoided this by providing the leadership that is so desperately lacking from our union, by immediately outlining the need for action and by connecting this to many broader issued affecting the vast majority of DWP’s 90,000+ staff.
“Left Unity” negotiators making mistake after mistake
New depths are still being plumbed, however, by the union’s current leadership. Negotiators revealed that, contrary to what thousands of members were told during the office closure announcements, when staff were told that DWP would do everything possible to avoid redundancies, DWP has admitted they have money set aside for potential redundancies.
Members and reps raised concerns on the day of the announcements that the offices designated to receive any transferred staff from closing sites did not have enough space. Increasingly, this fear seems justified – especially since DWP has not given a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies.
Negotiators also revealed that they have been involved in discussions with DWP about “workforce management” processes. This admission only came about because Broad Left Network reps highlighted intranet changes that DWP had not consulted about or announced publicly, removing DWP’s commitment to statutory redundancy protections for DWP staff.
One of the questions union negotiators were asked by reps was about the planned staffing and workload figures, which are usually provided by DWP as part of the ordinary run of industrial relations. This would reveal where the cuts are intended, and the likely impact on all other staff. Negotiators were unable to state clearly if they have this information.
Getting this information and getting it out to branches is crucial to building a union response. The first duty of the union’s leadership is to win support amongst the activist base for a fighting strategy up to and including industrial action, and working with reps to map a route to get to that outcome – because this kind of action is what we know will be needed to win.
By allowing the format of the recent reps’ meeting to be dictated by DWP, by incompetence in not realising the significance of information provided by DWP, by their inadequacy in expecting DWP to act in good faith, the current leadership of PCS is repeatedly showing that it is not up to the task of fighting office closures. It must step aside for those who can launch this fight.
An alternative is available
On the day of the announcements on 17th March, Broad Left Network supporters attended as many of the affected sites as we could. The message we put forward was clear. We clearly stated our opposition to the closures and believed the primary role of the union is to fight to retain jobs and offices.
Inevitably a lot of the questions we fielded on the day were about practicalities for those offices where the work was being relocated and where members were promised a “lift and drop” of their jobs. However, where we made it clear that the first order of business was keeping existing buildings and securing all jobs, members agreed enthusiastically.
We have evidence that in these sites, new members have joined the union as a result.
We also face the threat to 3,000 fixed term staff, that their jobs will end at the end of June. The impact to both Jobcentre and Service Centre staff by the loss of these jobs will be calamitous for caseload levels and stress. We have been working hard, where we have a base, to enlist support from staff for a campaign to defend these jobs.
Critical for an integrated campaign
How we link these issues has now become critical. The GEC need to stop separating out these attacks as single issues, they need to be integrated into one campaign to bring the workforce together in defence of the major attack being made by the employer.
With the right approach, this could be expanded to all branches in DWP very quickly, even in the limited amount of time available. It can be linked to the office closures, the inevitable disruption to DWP work and the redundancies DWP is clearly planning. It can also be linked to safety – while Covid-19 guidelines are increasingly being discarded, the risks have not gone away. Offices which had hitherto maintained spacing between occupied desks are already planning to get rid of this, in order to facilitate transfers of staff into fewer sites.
It can also be linked to the attack on our pay launched by HM Treasury this week, with the 2-3% pay remit in an era of 8% inflation – a 5% pay cut, minimum. There are union reps who would not wait to react to DWP’s next betrayal of the pay, jobs and working conditions of their staff, but who would mobilise the full power of the union to resist.
You will find them on your ballot paper – these are the Broad Left Networks supporters.
The Broad Left Network support an integrated campaign on all these demands:
- No to the 48 DWP office closures, no redundancies, protect jobs, keep services local.
- Defend every job – the loss of 3,000 FTAs and who knows how many staff as a result of office closures will be calamitous for claimants and staff in DWP.
- Permanent jobs now – the recent redundancy exercise for our temporary staff is a mess. The scoring system is a mess. These staff are capable and should be given jobs.
- For an extra 30,000 staff in DWP to reduce caseloads in Service Centres and Jobcentres and to support under pressure areas such as State Pension.
- End micromanagement, end compulsory late working, end compulsory Saturday working: spreading few staff over more working hours and days is ludicrous.
- Safety first: for an agreement between DWP and PCS on home/hybrid working, that secures the benefits of home/hybrid working for all and keeps people safe.
- No discrimination – equality proof all HR policies and pay systems
- A 10% pay rise, minimum, to reverse the fall in wages due to rising prices since 2010.
PCS Broad Left Network 