Rebuild the PCS National Campaign – elect Marion Lloyd as PCS General Secretary

Rebuild the PCS National Campaign – elect Marion Lloyd as PCS General Secretary

The union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) met on 12^th and 13^th July to rubber stamp the attempt by the Left Unity majority to end the union’s national campaign on pay, pensions, redundancy rights and jobs for 2023.

Broad Left Network supporters on the NEC, along with Independent Left NEC members, voted in wholesale opposition to these proposals, and insisted that the NEC must carry out its mandate.

Our view is very simple.

PCS National Campaign must continue – there is more to be won!

Annual Delegate Conference in 2022 and 2023 issued instructions to the NEC to demand a 10% pay rise for 2022/23, to fight to recoup the 2% we have overpaid on our pensions for years now, to defend the civil service compensation scheme and to demand a jobs guarantee.

ADC 2023 was told by NEC speaker Lorna Merry, also Group President of PCS in Revenue and Customs, that the NEC would also factor in an inflation-proof pay demand for 2023/24.

As we stand, very little of this has been achieved – indeed when it comes to demanding an inflation-proof pay rise for 2023/24 in addition to a 10% pay rise for 2022/23, there is no evidence that the NEC even bothered to live up to the promise given to all branch delegates assembled at Conference.

On pay, once the noise and fanfare from the NEC majority abates, members will have suffered an average pay cut in the last two years of approximately 10%, once our pay rises for 2022/23 and 2023/24 are compared with inflation, i.e., with the average rise in prices across the economy.

On pensions, not an iota of progress has been made. On our redundancy rights, the government is continuing to run their public consultation on cuts and plainly intends to implement those cuts in 2025. On jobs, no guarantee was achieved.

It is obvious, therefore, that despite the concession of a £1,500 non-consolidated, pro-rated, one-off lump sum payment in most Westminster areas, the campaign must continue.

As recently as May 2023, the NEC won a renewed mandate for strike action in an all-members ballot, in which tens of thousands of members and dozens of bargaining areas got over the line. This was confirmed later that month by the votes at PCS Annual Delegate Conference, where three motions were debated, all of which demanded continuation of the campaign.

Broad Left Network supporters on the NEC therefore argued that the NEC needs to carry out this mandate. Further, Annual Delegate Conference 2023 instructed the NEC to get on with the job of re-balloting DWP. Revenue and Customs Group Conference ordered a re-ballot for their group too.

Despite this, the NEC majority, led by President Fran Heathcote, has done everything they can to squander the momentum painstakingly built up, at the cost of millions of pounds, by the union’s national campaign since our first strike mandate was won in November 2022.

NEC majority delays and demobilises the National Campaign

When news broke in June 2023 that the government would offer a £1,500 non-consolidated, pro-rated, one-off lump sum payment to Westminster civil servants, Heathcote and her NEC minions immediately suspended strike action, including calling off in-progress strikes in DVLA.

Key NEC members, such as Deputy President Martin Cavanagh, dishonestly argued in meetings and on social media that we now needed to see what employers would offer for 2023/24, so they voted for the NEC to instruct pay negotiators in each area that delegated pay bargaining should now begin.

Pay negotiations are an arcane affair even for union activists, so it is important to understand the extent to which this decision – by an NEC with Heathcote in the chair and all of their “Left Unity” hangers-on attending – was a flagrant betrayal of union members and the national campaign.

At the time Heathcote and co made this decision, they knew with 100% certainty that employers would not be able to offer inflation-proof pay rises to PCS members. Pay across all Westminster areas is constrained by the Treasury insistence that average pay rises live within a cap of 4.5%.

Anything above 4.5% (with a small amount of wiggle room of an extra 0.5% for the low paid) would mean someone else’s pay would have to be held below 4.5%.

In that context, earnest delegated pay negotiations are a distraction, especially when happening at the same time as the NEC calling off strikes and demobilising the national campaign.

Instead, with the Tory government having blinked on pay, the NEC should have immediately gone out to whip up members to redouble our efforts under a banner of “More can be won!” They should have called further national and targeted strike action, as we proposed at the time.

Employers may ultimately have sought to impose pay awards for 2023/24 regardless, but had the NEC maintained momentum, members would have been well prepared to return to the picket lines to fight against the inevitable real-terms pay cut.

Instead of showing determined leadership, the Heathcote-led NEC called off our strikes, called off the re-ballot in DWP and failed to take any steps to prepare members to continue the campaign. They tried to hide this by arguing that the NEC needed a “consultation” amongst members.

To get the result they wanted, they published a Speakers Brief to branch secretaries across the union filled with distortion, misrepresentation and outright falsehoods, including attempting to demoralise reps with the view that at least PCS had now achieved parity with the public sector and if we fought on we’d be alone.

Both of these statements are untrue.

On 14^th July, the government accepted the recommendations of the public sector pay review bodies. Average pay rises of up to 7% are countenanced by this, compared with the average cap of 4.5% for the civil service – notwithstanding the fact that it has now come to light that senior civil servants will average 5.5%!

Other unions, including ASLEF, the RMT, the BMA for both junior doctors and consultants, the UCU and other unions with smaller numbers in the public sector, such as Unite members in ambulances and emergency call centres, have all undertaken industrial action in the last six weeks.

The NEC majority wanted to be let off the hook, and did everything they could to muddy the waters, so that members would not be given a lead to fight for more.

That the results of the “consultation” by the NEC, wasn’t even presented in full to the NEC meetings on 12^th and 13^th July is proof that the majority weren’t really interested anyway as they already knew what their answer was going to be – they always intended to end the strikes and shutter the campaign.

Even the partial consultation document that was presented, listing many but not all of the responses emailed in by branches, makes for fascinating reading. Lots of branches are unambiguously in favour of continuing the campaign. Those branches which are nominally in favour of ending the campaign have lots of questions, such as, “Can the NEC guarantee that we’ll all receive the £1,500 and a consolidated pay rise of 4.5%?

Of course, the NEC can’t guarantee that. The £1,500 and whatever consolidated pay rise is offered within the limits set by Treasury in March 2023 must both come from within existing budgets. This means that the money available will vary in each area, which is why the overarching aim of the campaign was always to force the Treasury to put more money on the table, and the Treasury have not done this. The NEC speakers brief, however, pretended that a pay award of 4.5% was a certainty.

Mark Serwotka, speaking after the announcement of the Treasury pay remit of a 4.5% cap to average pay rises, called the cap “insulting”. Yet it is precisely with this cap still firmly in place that the NEC majority under Fran Heathcote wants to declare victory. Their dishonesty and incompetence in the execution of the instructions given to them by the union’s democratic Conference is complete. 

Balloting on the NEC “strategy” instead of getting on with the job

To rubber stamp their failure, they now intend to hold a ballot of all members covered by the national dispute. This will be held from 3^rd August until 31st August.

Continuing the NEC majority’s attempts to muddy the waters – and reflecting the pressure they are under from activists and branches – the NEC will not hold a straight yes or no vote on whether members have received enough in pay to close the campaign for this year.

That would expose the real views of Heathcote and Cavanagh in particular at just the moment where they have their eyes set on becoming General Secretary and National President respectively.

The ballot will instead focus on whether or not members “endorse the NEC strategy”. Raucous jeers from all corners of the union retort, “what strategy?!”

Heathcote and co intend to argue that the national campaign hasn’t ended at all.

There will be no strikes. There will be no re-ballots. There will be no levy. But, says the NEC, the campaign continues! Perhaps the NEC majority are eager to hold another petition. Back in late 2020, when Broad Left Network supporters on the NEC urged ballots both on safety during the pandemic and on pay, the NEC instead put their effort into turning out 100,000 signatures to a Parliamentary petition. Such weakness resulted in a pay freeze for 2021.

A 14^th July email to all members gives further insight into the continuing flagrant dishonesty of the NEC:

“At this point in time, we need to go into talks with employers on pay for the 2023/24 pay round and demand at least the same increases as other public sector workers. It’s only when the talks are completed that the union will know what consolidated pay rises members will get for 2023/24. We can then judge that against inflation and against the pay review announcements made yesterday.”

Inflation, when judged by the lower estimate, is 8.7%. Higher estimates, using the Retail Price Index instead of the Consumer Price Index show inflation increasing by well over 10%. Even this higher figure is likely to underestimate the impact of rising prices. Price rises are often sharper for working class people. Food, for example, makes up a higher proportion of what we spend our salary on, and food inflation is around 19%.

There is not even the slightest chance that departments will make an offer that keeps up with inflation for most staff. Because of the 4.5% cap to average pay rises across departments (with the extra 0.5% for the low paid), any pay rise that exceeds 4.5% will mean someone else gets a pay rise of under 4.5%.

Despite the trumpeting of certain specific pay offers and high-sounding percentage pay rise figures, as recently in the Home Office, the NEC’s rush to get into delegated pay talks and lack of a strategy to force the Treasury to put more money on the table will either result in relatively flat pay rises clustered around 4.5-5% that fail to meet inflation or they’ll result in a small number getting high percentages while many others get consolidated pay rises well below even 4.5%. This is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

To argue, therefore, that strikes must temporarily abate so that employer pay negotiations can begin (i.e., so we can find out just how deeply members’ pay will be cut) is not just dishonest, it is utterly moronic. It is the further proof that the NEC majority under Fran Heathcote doesn’t want to talk genuinely about the next steps in our campaign – it just wants off the hook from running a campaign at all.

Vote NO in the strategy ballot – then vote Marion Lloyd for PCS General Secretary

Broad Left Network supporters across PCS will argue against the NEC strategy in the upcoming ballot. The NEC doesn’t have a strategy.

We will urge members to vote to continue the campaign, to call further strikes in those areas where we have a mandate and to re-ballot in those areas where the mandate is expiring or was not renewed in May by the tiniest of margins.

Serious work will have to be done to restore confidence amongst members. Given that pay rises will inevitably fall shy of inflation, we will be able to count on members’ anger. So long as we give members a clear lead and outline a coherent campaign of industrial action, we will be able to mobilise and win future strike ballots.

What recent events underscore, however, is how much damage is being done – to our members, to our campaigns, to the union itself – by a leadership that doesn’t have the first clue how to lead.

The dishonesty and Orwellian doublespeak in the union’s national communications to members is undermining confidence and fragmenting our national campaign – and the NEC majority then has the cheek to turn around and to try and blame anyone who disagrees with them for being “factional”.

Having thus disorganised and fragmented the national campaign by poor leadership, the NEC majority then want to ballot, in the hope that members being disheartened will let them off the hook of having to get out and fight a serious battle against the government. Things cannot go on like this.

We must get rid of PCS Left Unity and particularly of General Secretary-wannabe, Fran Heathcote, who still has not apologised for her recent underhanded and undemocratic attempt to keep LGBT+ rights motions from being heard whilst chairing Annual Delegate Conference this year.

For this reason, Broad Left Network supporters have endorsed Marion Lloyd as our candidate for PCS General Secretary. For twenty years Marion has been the voice of the members on the union’s National Executive. She is President of the union in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. At every step, she has put forward clear ideas on how to build the union’s National Campaign.

BLN supporters have also worked carefully with supporters of the Independent Left in PCS, to design a joint socialist programme on which Marion will stand alongside incumbent Assistant General Secretary, John Moloney, as they attempt to put the needs and voices of members at the top of the union’s agenda, and as they fight to restore momentum to the campaign that Fran Heathcote has stalled.

Union reps and union members: we need socialists in the top job in PCS – when the time comes later this year, ask your branches to nominate and mobilise all members to vote for Marion Lloyd for GS and for John Moloney as Assistant GS.