Left Unity’s undemocratic wrecking tactics at NEC

On 4 June, the union’s newly elected National Executive Committee (NEC) met for the first time. Following the May 2024 elections, the union has a changed political composition; a new left majority has been established, with 19 out of 35 seats won by PCS Broad Left Network (BLN). PCS Independent Left (IL) and left independents.

At Tuesday’s NEC meeting, the defeated group that has been leading the union, and which still retains the post of General Secretary and President, showed exactly what it intends to do to undemocratically keep hold of power in the union.

Even before the meeting, the Left Unity minority was hard at work to block any kind of change. They refused to put the union’s national campaign, or the battle to defend recently sacked union reps, on to the agenda in the first place, and refused to produce a written paper on either one. This would have immediately given effect to motions A315 and A323, passed by the union’s Annual Delegate Conference, which met in Brighton from 21 to 23 May and arguably the issues that concern members the most.

Once the meeting convened, the General Secretary bent to pressure and pledged to give a verbal report on the rep sackings – although thanks to manoeuvres by the President and a refusal to reorder a heavy agenda, this was never delivered. At the time of writing, the NEC still has not received a report on the sacked reps from the General Secretary.

President attempts to keep power through bureaucracy

The first item of business addressed by the union’s new President, Martin Cavanagh, was the proposal by him to continue with a set of “Standing Orders” (the rules governing how the NEC functions) which were put in place by the outgoing Left Unity leadership. These proposals were intended to protect the already substantial power of the National President and designed to make it as hard as possible for the new left majority to progress the issues that most concerned reps and members.

The newly elected left majority had submitted substantial amendments to these proposals to ensure the new NEC could govern effectively and take forward the programme it was elected to progress.

Cavanagh’s proposals were voted down and the amended proposals were agreed. However, the new President ruled that these were not passed because they required a two-thirds majority. The President immediately suspended the meeting and attempted to dismiss the NEC on the grounds that it did not have any standing orders.

This kind of Presidential obstruction of the work of the majority has not been seen since the right-wing led our predecessor union in CPSA and so many of us worked so hard to defeat – culminating with the election of Mark Serwotka in the Year 2000.

Broad Left Network supporters proposed that, instead of suspending the meeting, the meeting be adjourned for one hour. When the meeting re-convened just after midday, the left majority deliberately but unwillingly voted for Cavanagh’s undemocratic standing orders in order to prevent the indefinite suspension of the NEC that the President had threatened and in order to progress the key issues for members.

Important business was on the agenda, including the union’s political strategy and the belatedly-promised verbal report on the sacked PCS reps, and while Cavanagh and Left Unity are willing to play games with the business and needs of our members, BLN and our allies are not.

Left counterproposals defeated attempts by the President to assign a majority in all important sub-committees to Left Unity members, who no longer form part of the elected working majority. This included the Policy and Resources Committee, Organising and Education Committee, the Finance Committee, the Campaign Committee and the UK Civil Service Bargaining Committee, despite his slate of candidates having suffered defeat in the national elections. This was one high point of a difficult meeting that, thanks to Left Unity obstructionist tactics, yielded little that will benefit union members. The subcommittees now reflect the democratic mandate given by the membership. We must now make sure they meet quickly.

Some steps forward on political strategy

The PCS intervention in the General Election is vital and as such the political strategy was dealt with at the tail end of the meeting. The President immediately decided to use a President’s ruling to throw the two most substantive motions on political strategy off the agenda without debate or vote.

One of these motions was proposed by Broad Left Network supporters and is reproduced below. It sought to use the General Election as a springboard to re-launch the union’s national campaign on pay, pensions, jobs and rights at work.

High-profile demands on Labour, as part of a conscious strategy of mobilising members would be coupled with consultation with senior lay reps in PCS and with the 64 areas which won a strike mandate in May about taking industrial action during the general election to make our members’ needs into an issue in the campaign.

As part of wide-scale mobilisation, branches would be permitted to hold all-members’ meetings to discuss whether they wished to endorse anti-austerity parliamentary candidates – such as Jeremy Corbyn, long standing ally of our union’s members – in their constituencies.

With the motion thrown off the agenda by the President, this could not even be debated. Once the President as chair of the meeting makes a ruling, it requires a two thirds majority to overturn it – evidently, these should be used sparingly and only in the most serious of situations, not for deciding that motions from NEC members can’t be heard because they disagree with the paper put forward by the General Secretary.

Instead, the General Secretary read out her NEC paper on political strategy, which did not amount to much more than a “Make Your Vote Count” approach, used by the union prior to 2017. The third motion left remaining motion on the agenda was passed, and this succeeded in demanding that the General Secretary must write to the Labour leadership to firmly place on record the demands recorded in Motion A12, passed by Conference 2024, which mostly relate to the union’s national campaign in the civil service.

It is clear that Left Unity, despite losing the national elections, feels comfortable attempting to block the majority from accomplishing the programme that they published to members, even if in the process they flagrantly disregard PCS Conference policy.

Our answer must be the building of a massive united left across PCS, to build a fighting, democratic union, with a genuinely socialist leadership that abandons the defensiveness and obfuscation of PCS Left Unity and gets out among members and reps to mobilise for a serious national campaign. If you agree with this, we urge you to join PCS Broad Left Network, and to write to us at pcsblnetwork@gmail.com to invite BLN supporters from the union’s National Executive Committee to speak at your branch.

Below was the motion BLN attempted to propose to and discuss with the union’s NEC and which the President unilaterally threw off the agenda.

Motion on General Election Strategy for NEC 6 June 2024

The NEC recalls the motions passed by Annual Delegate Conference in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022, as well as the motion proposed by the previous NEC, 2023-2024, to ADC 2024, which was not debated. Under the authority granted by motions A304 and A305 in 2017, the NEC agreed to proposals from branches to back 91 Labour candidates in the June 2017 General Election.

Conference 2019 authorised the NEC to “prepare guidance for branches and members in line with existing policy should a general election be called before May 2020”. Under this instruction, the NEC took a decision in September 2019 that they supported the Labour Party in England and Wales, would urge a vote to “Get the Tories out” in Scotland and would adopt a “Make Your Vote Count” approach in Northern Ireland. In both the 2017 and the 2019 elections, Jeremy Corbyn led Labour on a transformative manifesto.

Since 2019, Conference has not repudiated either the ability of branches to apply to the NEC in order to support candidates for election in particular constituencies, or the ability of the National Executive Committee to take a decision on political strategy affecting the whole of the UK. A motion was proposed by the 2023/24 NEC to Conference 2024 to do just this, to eliminate the ability of branches to seek support for individual candidates, but it was not debated.

The NEC asserts that the calling of a UK General Election, to take place on 4 July, raises fundamental questions about our industrial and political strategy in the next few months.

A Labour government is the most likely outcome of the pending General Election – but this is not an excuse to demobilise the union’s campaign. It is grounds to step up these campaigns. We must put emphatic support behind those Parliamentary candidates who support our members and their legitimate demands and needs. The NEC must take steps to mobilise members, to demonstrate clearly our intention to fight, and must place clear demands on the likely incoming Starmer-led Labour government, as per motion A12, passed by ADC 2024.

This NEC decides as follows:

• Noting his decades of support for workers’ rights, for pay justice and national bargaining in the civil service, for the full funding of public services, for an end to the scourge of privatisation, for the nationalisation of energy, railways and the post office and for his opposition to racism and oppression domestically and internationally, from South Africa to Palestine, the Public and Commercial Services union endorses Jeremy Corbyn as the candidate for parliament in Islington North. The General Secretary will notify Mr Corbyn’s campaign and will work to identify ways in which the campaign can by supported by PCS nationally as well as by any groups, branches, reps and members who wish to participate, within the bounds of any constraints imposed by law. These will be subject to approval by the Senior Officers Committee.

• Instructs the General Secretary to write to the Rt Hon. Sir Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party to seek urgent discussion and public commitments around the clear political demands raised in motion A12 of ADC 2024 and on the following points additionally, which are all consistent with the policies passed by PCS Conference since austerity began:
  • The need for an urgent pay rise of 10% in the civil service, and for a minimum wage in the public sector and amongst privatised staff on government contracts of £15 per hour, with appropriate additions for London, to address the pay crisis facing civil servants, workers in associated bodies and privatised workers on national government contracts across the UK, and to finally end once and for all the ridiculous situation where our skilled AA and AO grade staff are reduced to earning the National Minimum Wage each year.
  • Pay and pensions justice and reversal of the massive attack on our rights – including through the 2016 and 2023 anti-trade union laws – implemented by Con-Dem and Tory governments over more than a decade that has seen pay fall in real terms, has seen cuts to sick leave, to annual leave, to union rights, to job protections and attempted cuts to redundancy terms. As part of a fair settlement, we reiterate our campaign demand for a reduction in the working week without loss of pay, already being achieved in Scotland, to be extended to UK and other devolved civil servants, to government workers in associated bodies and to commercial sector workers on government contracts.
  • Repudiation of the Tory plan to cut 72,000 civil service jobs, and for politicians to make a public commitment to 100,000 new civil service jobs, including as part of the creation of a National Climate Service, in line with longstanding PCS policy, entailing genuine negotiation with the civil service trade unions covering workload protections, uses of AI, maximising flexibility for civil servants in respect of hybrid working and defence of and investment in our office estate.
     

• That the NEC appoints a team to meet with the Labour leadership, should the Labour leadership seek a face-to-face meeting, with appropriate non-voting support from amongst the FTO cadre as identified by the General Secretary.

• Instructs the General Secretary to communicate the above demands to the Labour leadership by the end of the day on 7 June 2024. The deadline for a response from the Labour leadership is set as 20 June 2024. The response – or lack of response – will be published to members. The message to members must be agreed by the delegation appointed to meet the Labour leadership.

• Reaffirms the right of branches to propose support for candidates in any parliamentary constituency in their geographical footprint to a branch EGM, where those candidates are positively identified as publicly supporting the minimum demands outlined above, where they are not in breach of PCS policy on equality including support for Trans rights, and where they have an established record of campaigning on these issues. Such proposals should be forwarded to the NEC via the General Secretary for final approval.

• The General Secretary will prepare and publish guidance by 10 June to explain how branches can apply to the NEC for permission to support candidates, to ensure civil servants do not fall foul of the pre-election period impartiality rules, to ensure civil servants do not use any facilities granted by the various employers to convene these meetings and to make all reps and members aware of what activities they can legitimately undertake in order to support union-backed candidates in the General Election. The NEC delegates the Senior Officers Committee to agree the final list of candidates endorsed by PCS.

• Asserts that industrial strategy and political strategy must go hand in hand in this period. Even whilst we take steps on our political strategy, we must also ready ourselves to renew our industrial campaign should a pro-austerity government, committed to following through planned Tory cuts in the civil service and related areas be elected. A Senior Lay Reps Forum is summoned for w/c 10 June to lay out the NEC’s political strategy, the major pressure being placed on Labour, the likely approach should Labour attempt to implement Tory cuts, and to take views from each area on the mood, organisational readiness and likely needs of each area regarding a potential pivot to action and/or a re-ballot, as appropriate.

• Instructs the UK Civil Service Bargaining Committee to oversee meetings with those areas that won a mandate in May 2024, to discuss their views and members’ views on the potential for invoking that mandate, especially on days where other unions are likely to be taking strike action, such as the BMA Junior Doctors.