The National Executive Committee (NEC) of PCS met last week to consider next steps in the union’s national campaign on pay, pensions, jobs and redundancy rights. This includes all members who are part of the pay arrangements imposed by the UK government and specifically excludes those in the Scottish Sector and those in the Commercial Sector.
Broad Left Network supporters elected to the union’s NEC continued to put forward the need for a serious national campaign, and not the pretences and half measures put forward by new General Secretary Fran Heathcote and acting national president Martin Cavanagh.
Heathcote and Cavanagh, and their Left Unity cabal who currently hold a majority on the National Executive, spent from June 2023 until September 2023 doing everything in their power to demobilise and dismantle the national campaign.
They cancelled strikes, they cancelled strike re-ballots, they cancelled the union’s strike levy, which had built up a reserve of money to use on targeted strike action. At every NEC meeting from September until last week, they did nothing to move forward the national campaign.
Adding insult to injury, they hid behind an all-members ballot organised last year, arguing that “members had endorsed the NEC strategy”. In order to get this endorsement, the NEC majority blatantly lied to members, telling them that a “yes” vote continued the campaign.
Last week’s NEC proves that there has been no campaign for the last nine months, and that a new campaign must be built from scratch.
Where are we on pay?
New research shows that the position on pay is truly terrible. Inflation – i.e. the percentage rise in prices – has been in the news for two years now, because by any measure, prices have risen by around 20% in the last two years. Every pound we are paid is worth a fifth less.
Interestingly, the rise in prices over the last two years only accounts for about half of the pay erosion civil servants have had to endure since 2010. The other half is made up of inflation from 2010-2022, the pay freezes and 1% caps to pay rises in that period.
Using the standard method by which trade unions calculate how much would be needed to undo pay austerity since 2010, the average pay rise we actually need is 32.9%. This will be different depending on grade and department, each of which has been hit slightly differently.
On June 5th 2023, having received an offer of a one-time, non-pensionable, pro-rata payment of £1,500, which was to be added to the 4.5-5% average pay rise published in March 2023, the NEC decided that this was enough to justify cancelling the national campaign.
For most PCS members, and for most civil servants, even added together (which is inadvisable since the £1,500 is a one-off) this did not exceed 10%. The new research throws into sharp relief just how weak the NEC have been, in conceding 2023 pay at that point.
This is to say nothing of the other issues on which no progress has been made – on our pensions in particular, where we are overpaying out contributions by 2% of salary each year, and on jobs, where the government have announced 66,000 job cuts.
What does BLN call for?
In the aftermath of the pause in the campaign forced by the NEC majority in June, which we voted to oppose and which went against PCS Conference policy – conference had ordered re-ballots to proceed – we called for the national campaign to be reinstated immediately.
Nine months of a gap in any kind of serious activity means we are essentially back where we started in September 2022, at the time when we launched our first post-pandemic national strike ballot. We must rebuild the campaign from the ground up.
We must reiterate the demand, agreed by ADC 2022, of a 10% pay rise, and add to this a demand for a framework to progressively undo the erosion of our rates of pay since 2010. We must explain this to members and prepare them for a serious fight.
Pay cannot be the only issue on which we build a dispute. It is not the only issue we face.
Cancellation of the 66,000 job cuts, a no-compulsory redundancy guarantee, improvement of the CS Jobs Protocols, workload safeguards, a national collective agreement enshrining hybrid working rights, reinstitution of legacy pension rights and restitution of our over-payments and opposition to office closures must all feature.
We support the launching of a consultative ballot, although we think the NEC’s decision is less to do with seriously building a campaign than with the NEC majority being able to pose, during branch AGM season, as having done something meaningful since June.
This is obvious. The NEC met and agreed this on 14th, with the consultative ballot to be launched on 20th February. No time was allowed for branches and groups to confer, to consult members, or even for a senior lay rep forum to ask questions of the new approach.
Instead, the NEC have opted for their usual approach of a stage-managed Facebook Live event organised for 19 February, featuring the acting (unelected) national president, to boost his profile ahead of the April elections.
Union organising: the serious BLN approach vs. opportunistic electioneering by LU
It would have been far more sensible to hold meetings across the union centred around concrete demands – on 10% now, on pay restoration etc. – to mobilise members and raise pressure on the Cabinet Office as we head into negotiations on the national pay remit.
Prepared for with emails and leaflets and noticeboard posters, this would have a secondary effect of raising the profile of the campaign, which tends to result in people joining the union because they want to be involved. This approach, together with placing demands on those who have aspirations to govern, given we are in a General Election year will not only increase pressure on the employer, but new activists may also be won.
It would have given time for groups to consider how pressure could also be brought to bear on the major issues resulting from the under-resourcing and under-staffing across the civil service and related bargaining areas as part of the national campaign.
A consultative or even statutory ballot could then be launched in March, coinciding with the decisive part of any talks with the Cabinet Office on the civil service-wide pay remit, and with any announcement being used to fuel the vote in the ballot itself.
Actively going out to members in this way – rather than a digital ballot being launched with no preparation and no agitational materials to use in discussion with members – would also allow reps to field questions about a renewed strike levy.
We support a strike levy. This is not an issue of principle, but of tactics – we will resort to whatever tactics will win with the least pain for members and it is clear that the strike levy can raise a lot of money. So long as members’ confidence is retained, it is broadly supported.
What is still missing, however, is any serious analysis of the targeted strike wave that ran from December 2022 until June 2023.
We are fighting a national dispute on pay and the other issues – this requires national strike action. It is not an accident that national action has been used in every other major national industrial dispute over the last two years, from teachers and lecturers to posties and railways.
The NEC are sowing illusions amongst ordinary members of the union if they pretend that the scale of victory required can be won purely by fully paid, selective strike action.
No doubt paid, selective action has a role to play – but without any serious analysis of the impact of our previous strike action, and government mitigation measures, the NEC cannot explain to members what level of sacrifice will be required.
From the outset then, the NEC are setting reps up, as we will be unable to answer basic questions that any serious-minded member would reasonably ask. This reduces the electronic consultative ballot they have announced to a shallow propaganda exercise that allows for certain people to use the machinery of the union in their election efforts.
BLN does not treat union organising in so cavalier a fashion.
Nevertheless, vote YES
Whatever our objections to the incompetence of the NEC majority, their repeated dishonesty around the national campaign and the electoral opportunism of choosing to launch a consultative ballot without due preparation, we must nevertheless vote yes in the ballot – actually being called a survey!
- YES to the 2024/5 pay demands even though we believe they should spell out in clear terms what it is they are demanding in terms of pay restoration.
- YES to taking strike action to achieve the demands even though we believe they should make clear to members what their strike strategy is.
- YES to contributing to a strike levy to support targeted action even though we believe national all-members action must be a major part of our strike strategy.
We understand the union’s pay claim has already been submitted and notice given to the employer of a dispute! This raises the question of what purpose this survey serves. It also makes it necessary we say yes to the demands and action – notwithstanding our concerns. Imagine the farcical position we will be in as a union if the Left Unity NEC, having prejudged the outcome of their own survey, has to withdraw the claim through lack of support!
BLN reps across PCS will be organising in their branches to turn out a yes vote; the bigger the vote, the more the pressure on the NEC to do something more concrete, and of course the more the pressure on the government at an important moment during the pay talks cycle.
This is not enough on its own however. Through their inaction during the pandemic, through their weak tactics in the strike wave of 2022/23, through their eagerness to call off the dispute at the first concession from the government, the current leadership prove that they must go.
We urge all reps to nominate, support and campaign for a change in the leadership of PCS – including Marion Lloyd for President and all the Broad Left Network supported candidates, in alliance with the Independent Left and other independent candidates in the forthcoming NEC elections in April are ready to seriously lead our union.
PCS Broad Left Network 