At lunchtime on the 10th November, members of the union were told that their strike ballot, which had run from 26th September until 7th November, had crossed the 50% turnout threshold. Almost a hundred thousand members in both UK and devolved government areas have achieved a mandate for strike action.
A brilliant victory which makes it ever more galling for members in HMRC where members voted with their feet (84.4%) for strike action but failed to reach the anti union law threshold of 50% (47.37% of HMRC members voted) – even more galling because in the last statutory ballot HMRC members beat the threshold but were unable to act because the current national leadership (dominated by Left Unity) has spent years dogmatically opposing a ballot held employer by employer (disaggregated). It’s a shame to think, that if they had listened then we could have been in a much healthier position now given the magnificent results, won on the back of the hard work of reps and members. So while many parts of PCS are celebrating their ballot successes – and rightly so – the R&C Group face disappointment.
Reps and members have worked tirelessly to achieve that vote and with the huge numbers voting for strike action, the employer should not feel it is off the hook. This is an excellent basis to build and we welcome the NEC decision to re-ballot in R&C Group – but this must be quick and decisive – we must learn the lessons and win that ballot.
Strong and determined leadership required at National and Group levels
R&C Group must intervene early and support branches and workplaces – too little, too late is not good enough – as must the national leadership. Members details should have been updated years ago and if the national union had done its job properly, this would already be part and parcel of the day to day work undertaken locally. No leaflets created a barrier and wasted time, causing locally planned activities to go awry. If the national union has properly engaged with reps locally and at branch level all this could have been prevented.
But it is clear that the current leaderships at both group and national level are content that the union is being run by a centralised team of bureaucrats who have little or no desire to talk to those of us on the ground about what is required. We must recognise the negative role of the Left Unity majority on the NEC. They pressed Conference to delay holding a ballot until September, halting the momentum being built since the indicative ballot earlier in 2022.
Build a strategy capable of winning
The Left Unity-led NEC must set out their strategy to win the national campaign. Now is not the time to blink and it is crucial that whilst we demand talks, notice is served to the employer to bring out on strike the 126 areas who achieved a mandate for action, linking in the strike action with other unions to take place on the 30th November. This will build the confidence of R&C Group members and help us win a re-ballot. It is astonishing that this approach, put forward by the BLN on the NEC, was voted down including by those on the NEC from R&C Group.
Where was the second question – a vote to take action short of a strike such as a work to rule and overtime ban? Left Unity forgot this and this means an important part of our overall strategy is missing before we’ve even started. This must be rectified in the re-ballot.
But the Left Unity-led R&C GEC must also take responsibility. The GEC has a top down approach to organising, bargaining and campaigning. This was especially apparent when it came to Pay and Contract Reform (PACR). Branches were excluded from having a say in what was being negotiated or the recommendation put to members. A minority of branches that came out against the offer were deliberately side lined so that the case against the offer wasn’t made.
This undemocratic attitude isn’t unique to PACR. Despite Group Conference policy being for a Business Trade Union Side to be set up in each business area, there are GEC members that want to avoid having meetings with branches, let alone having a rep attend their meetings with HMRC. The result is a steady de-skilling of reps. Combine this with the loss of a layer of experienced reps due to Building Our Future office closures, and the result is a reduced number of reps with the experience of organising members.
Reps deserve better support. The GEC failed in its obligations – organising meetings were turned into talking shops, meetings held with Mark Serwotka were no more than a facile call to arms. Reps want practical information, not rhetoric, they want the resources to do their job and support from their ‘leaders’. These issues must be resolved in the re-ballot.
Pay and Contract Reform not a barrier to winning
Some activists in R&C Group are already blaming PACR for the Group’s failure to breach the 50% threshold this time. Members of the Broad Left Network opposed the offer that was put by HMRC to PCS. We campaigned for a ‘no’ vote due to the divisive nature of the offer and that it was concession bargaining. We’ve continued to fight the problems created by PACR for many members, especially those in Customer Services Group. As has been highlighted above, we acknowledge the likelihood that PACR is having a detrimental impact on reps too.
However we don’t accept the argument that the result of this latest ballot was a result of PACR. The turnout for R&C Group in the 2019 aggregate statutory ballot was around 50.1%. The reduction in turnout from 2019 to 2022 was around 2.7%. There’s only anecdotal evidence to attribute this to PACR – especially as the increases under this deal nowhere near compensate members for the current energy costs and crisis in living costs produced by a 12.6% increase in prices.
More importantly, the argument that PACR caused R&C Group to lose the ballot is defeatist and dangerous. It suggests that the members will never again vote in the numbers required and that the Group will be unable to win a re-ballot. We reject any defeatist attitude – the Group and National leadership must unite members and bring them with us to win. If they can’t do that then they must step aside.
Organising to win the re-ballot and win in offices
Branches have already learned many positive lessons from the recent ballot. As a new layer of organisers come forward and feel the disappointing sting of this ballot, they can grow and make PCS stronger. The experience of R&C Cumbernauld shows PCS can engage with vast numbers of members and encourage them to use their vote. A number of larger branches, such as Leeds, Merseyside, Stratford and West Mercia, breached the 50% threshold.
Branches need the resources to do the job to help them get the job done. The branch and the workplace is where the vote will be won – it is branch reps who members know and trust and go to, it is branch reps that have the strongest connection to members and the greatest likelihood of getting members to vote. The Union leadership needs to play its part by supporting and enthusing the local reps to do this in preparation for the re-ballot. The wider union can play its part as a supplement to branch activity, but it not as a substitute.
Branches should be encouraged to consider their results, to draw up a campaign plan and to ensure regular communicating and reporting back to the branch of progress against the plan. Then reps need to systematically contact every member to encourage them to vote. Extra resources should be identified by the union where required – used to supplement the work of local reps and branches, not parachuted in over their heads. These are ABCs of organising, but it would be reckless to assume they will just happen.
R&C members of BLN believe the GEC must call an urgent meeting of reps across the group. Bring everyone together to go through what support is there and use the reps who put good systems in place that succeeded in getting the vote out to talk about how they did it and encourage others to think about similar methods. There also needs to be a focus on what preparation reps can do right now to make the re-ballot easier, such as members meetings, branch communications, branch mapping, rechecking personal data. If R&C Group waits until January 2023 to start the work then the current momentum will be lost, just at happened over the summer.
A re-ballot also gives the opportunity for correct the NEC’s tactical error of having just one question on the ballot paper. Reps were already asking about action short of a strike before the ballot even opened.
But many of the problems arise at levels above the branch. There are too many people standing for NEC and GEC positions that are complacent. They are happy to let a damaging status quo carry on. This is why the Broad Left Network stands for elected positions. We argue for change at the rank and file level and stand for election to make that change a reality. If you agree with us, if you want to see changes to PCS to make us the combative and leading trade union that brought about the public sector strike on 30th November 2011, join us today and stand with us.
PCS Broad Left Network 