As noted on the PCS website, the National Museums Liverpool (NML) strike has been suspended from 28 May until 2 June, at the request of the Branch Executive Committee, while union members vote on an improved offer from the employer in respect of the one-off, non-consolidated, pro-rata £1,500 that the government authorised employers to pay in June 2023, and which NML refused to pay.
Determined and brave action by PCS NML members has forced further concessions from their employer. After 8 weeks of all-out strike action in spring 2024, National Museums Liverpool offered £750. Strikers remained determined and further strike action, together with plans for further escalation, have eventually wrangled an offer which includes £1,200, two days’ extra leave a year and other small gains.
Newly elected left Deputy and Vice Presidents of PCS, Bev Laidlaw, Dave Semple and Hector Wesley now form a voting majority alongside left Assistant General Secretary John Moloney on the union’s National Disputes Committee, which was asked by the PCS NML branch late on Friday afternoon for authority to suspend the strike action.
The new left majority on the National Disputes Committee was in constant touch with the PCS NML branch on Friday and did not agree to the suspension lightly, but a further letter to the NDC late on Friday night put forward very strongly the views of the NML branch committee members that the suspension was necessary.
Given the poor quality of the briefing received by the National Disputes Committee from internally within the national union and despite consistent support locally, from both full time and lay reps there are still questions to be asked about how effectively the national union has supported the local branch, in the period prior to the new left National Executive Committee taking office on 23 May. Under the new leadership, each and every dispute will be given the support and resources required to put members in the best place to win.
There are also questions to be asked about the extent to which the National Disputes Committee has been reduced to a rubber stamp over the last six years by General Secretary Fran Heathcote and President Martin Cavanagh. Their faction, PCS Left Unity, lost the May 2024 PCS elections and then went on to lose massively at Annual Delegate Conference in 2024, both in terms of watching their key motions defeated by angry delegates and in the elections held at Conference by branch block vote each year.
Supporters of the PCS Broad Left Network in Liverpool and beyond have been in regular attendance at NML picket lines and strike meetings.
BLN supporters Dave Semple and Fiona Brittle, respectively newly elected PCS Vice President and re-elected PCS NEC member, joined newly elected Deputy President Bev Laidlaw at Saturday’s NML strike rally at the Ship and Mitre in Liverpool. They pledged that, whatever the decision of PCS members at NML in respect of the revised offer from the employer, the new left majority on the union’s National Executive Committee would continue to support them,whether in continuing the fight for £1,500 or as part of the union’s reinvigorated national campaign for an immediate minimum wage of £15 per hour and for rectification of many other injustices suffered by civil servants and workers in privatised and associated bodies.
PCS Broad Left Network 