The DWP Group Executive Committee (GEC) met over two days (27 & 28 July) to discuss how it intends to respond to the crisis of low pay and increasing job insecurity, with nearly 1,000 members of staff now at real risk of compulsory redundancy due to the employer’s Workplace Transformation/Network Design Programme – or, to call it what it is, its Office Closure Programme. The Department has already confirmed that it intends to commence a review of its entire estate and, in effect, puts at risk every job across the country, especially if the Back of House site has an office workforce of less than 300.
The GEC was also given a verbal update on the National Campaign Ballot, which runs from 26th September and will last six weeks. The earliest time we will be able to take strike action if the 50% threshold is met will be late November.
The meeting was bookended by a 24-hour strike by 40,000 railway workers, represented by the RMT union, and the announcement of a massive vote for strike action by Unite, who had balloted 1,900 port workers in Felixstowe following a below-inflation pay rise. The following day, 40,000 Openreach engineers and BT call centre workers – walked out as part of their dispute over pay. All three of these disputes involve strike votes for the first time in at least 30 years.
With inflation now into double digits, and forecast in some quarters to reach 15% by the end of this year, one GEC member showed the committee the front page of the Guardian newspaper, which carried a headline that unions were threatening a general strike to deal with the cost of living crisis and as a rebuke to Liz Truss, who is running to replace Boris Johnson as Tory leader and Prime Minister, and her threats to introduce yet more anti-democratic, anti-trade-union legislation. That is the current period in which workers are operating, and there is a growing willingness to fight back against high inflation, falling living standards, and a range of attacks on other conditions of service. The resistance is no longer confined to the public sector, with dozens of smaller and protracted strikes taking place, including hundreds of bus drivers across the North West, who are out on indefinite strike action. Bizarrely, the committee was told on several occasions that nothing has changed since Annual Delegate Conference in May of this year, yet the newspaper headlines told a different story!
No Office Closures, No Jobs Cuts
The Broad Left Network supporters on the GEC, now totalling six (up from three) following the Group elections in May, moved a motion calling for the DWP GEC to seek authorisation from the National Disputes Committee to commence a national ballot of the Group as soon as possible, on all issues connected to the National Campaign: Pay job cuts, Civil Service Compensation Scheme, and for it to include office closures, under the campaign heading ‘No Office Closures, No Job Cuts”. We believe that the leverage conditions exist now, workers are organising in their trade unions to resist, and civil servants are demanding we do the same – now! There is a raft of DWP-specific issues that need the firmest possible response.
A further 10 Jobcentres were announced for closure on 20th July, which comes on the back of a previous list of Jobcentre closures earlier this year, and it has quickly become clear that the Workplace Transformation/Network Design strategy, which is seeking to close 42 back of house sites and put at risk nearly 1,000 jobs, now involves a review of its whole estate and a fight back, on a national, collective and co-ordinated basis is urgently needed. They have also ruled out providing the option of homeworking as a redundancy avoidance measure.
Left Unity ditching closure campaign
The strategy from the Left Unity GEC majority, which makes up the leadership of the DWP Group, has been to divide members and urge any campaign to be held on a singular and local basis, rather than join up the campaign to resist the closure programme. Their strategy now looks like they are ditching the office closures and staffing campaign in favour of the national ballot. The BLN, on the other hand, has consistently called for a national ballot, not just on office closures, but combining with the other key industrial issues, such as pay, staffing, and workloads, but we are now denounced as anti-democratic for attempting to override agreed union policy.
The effective and democratic running of PCS starts and ends at the Annual Delegate Conference. This is true. However, members elect a National Executive Committee, and a number of Group Executive Committees, to manage union affairs in the intervening period between ADCs and Group Conference. That delegated authority exists so that it can respond to issues as they rise. Sometimes the BLN will agree with a change of policy – such as the decision to include the disgraceful 91,000 job cut threat, when it met in July, despite ADC policy carrying no reference to jobs – and sometimes we will disagree such as when Mark Serwotka unilaterally “parked” the union’s policy to campaign for a 10% pay rise in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. We have clear Group conference policy linking staffing with the pay campaign and argued that we could utilise the tactic where groups are being balloted in a disaggregated way on the national campaign to include specific reference to the need for 30,000 extra staff and against office closures in our ballot material, to ensure all the issues our members are facing are included in a single ballot. It is not anti-democratic to argue for a ballot on all of the key issues at a time when the country is locked in an economic and political crisis. We believe the tide is flowing in our direction, yet the Left Unity leadership is doing all it can to miss riding it and they voted down our motion!
Climate change safeguards needed for members
Elsewhere, a vital debate took place on the Climate Emergency, in particular the slow response from the Department to the historic heatwave in mid-July. In seeking to amend the Health and Safety report, which only referenced the heatwave when criticising over-worked workplace reps for not understanding current Health and Safety employer policies, BLN supporters argued that a standing plan should be negotiated so that future extreme weather events, increasing in their frequency and severity, will be nationally led with clear guidance that presumes all offices would be closed in the worst affected areas as soon as the warning is issued. And no pressure to keep sites open in badly affected areas where our members or the public could be put at risk, to help reps get the right decision in each site based on safety. This amendment was carried.
COVID-19 absences could now lead to formal action
It was also reported that COVID-19 absences will no longer be protected against formal attendance management action, which risks increasing transmission in DWP workplaces as members report to work, despite unwell, out of fear of being issued with warnings. Moreover, recent studies have shown that in May 2022, 1.2 million people showed signs of Long Covid, which could be avoided by ensuring members have the ability to rest at home for the period of sickness. It is imperative that the responsible officers continue to negotiate with the employer to provide the best possible terms when recovering from COVID-19.
PCS Broad Left Network 