Rachel Reeves, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced on 29 July that the civil service pay remit for UK government pay awards in 2024/25 would be set at 5%. Departments and the various bodies of the civil service have been instructed to increase their overall pay bill by up to 5%. The Government, petrified of further industrial unrest, is attempting to buy us off at a discount rate.
PCS negotiators, led by General Secretary Fran Heathcote and President Martin Cavanagh, met with the Cabinet Office for a series of meetings up until 29 July. The negotiating team was not agreed by the NEC but was imposed unilaterally by the President. No progress was made in these discussions and it is not clear whether our demands, including for a 10% pay rise were even actually put.
After the final meeting on 29 July, further planned meetings were simply cancelled. Each employer will now seek to negotiate the specifics with PCS and the other civil service trade unions within the 5% overall remit, against a background where our pay has been in long-term decline.
Inflation in 2022 and 2023 was in double digits for a sustained period of time. Pay “rises” in the UK civil service did not keep up, with a 2% average rise in 2022, and a 4.5% average rise in 2023. The 2023 award sat alongside a non-consolidated, one-time payment of £1,500, which was pro-rata for part-time staff. Both were a pay cut, given rising prices. And thousands of members were left feeling cheated – not only by their employer but by the previous national leadership.
Rachel Reeves published guidance alongside her speech to Parliament. This makes the case that by 2021, public sector pay was in the worst position relative to private sector pay in thirty years. Moreover, while inflation is lower this year than in 2022 and 2023, all this means is that the speed of price increases has slowed, not that prices have dropped.
BLN NEC members will argue that the NEC must consult with activists across the PCS to decide if the 5% offer from the government is sufficient. Invitations from UK government employers to begin delegated pay talks have already been issued in some areas.
No new money in the pay remit means a threat to jobs
The remit informs employers, including departments and associated bodies, that they “must ensure that pay awards are affordable within their current spending settlements”, i.e. within the money agreed by the Spending Review of 2021 (SR21). That is a way of saying that no new money will be made available by Treasury. Civil service employers are likely to be already strapped for cash and unable to soothe their workforce. And even if they were they cannot go beyond an average increase of 5%.
Worse, because the pay remit is unfunded, there is a threat to jobs. Already across multiple civil service departments, swingeing staffing cuts have been announced. Transport and Education are early victims, but there is likely to be more to come. The funding pressures on departments, as the result of SR21, mean many departments will be faced with maximising the pay offer – even within the 5% – and job cuts.
Reject the remit – 5% is not enough: send a message to the government
The Treasury Pay Remit announcement does not mean that all members will get 5%. This is the increase permitted to the overall pay bill for each civil service employer. Each employer then seeks talks with the civil service trade unions, including PCS. This is called delegated pay bargaining.
Last year’s pay remit was 4.5%. This meant, in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), for example, the largest government department, this translated to 5% for most AAs, 6.25% for AO grades, 4.92% for most EO grades, and 4.5% for the rest up to Grade 6. Staff working in Inner and Outer London received less, as did some staff who did not adopt the DWP Employee Deal.
To put this in context, even with a 5% pay award for AAs and a 6.25% pay award for AO grades, both sets of staff had to receive a further pay rise on April 1 2024 because their pay had once again fallen below the national minimum wage. This is the very definition of “not enough” and proves, if further proof was needed, that 5% is not enough.
Other areas went through different divisions of the money, reflecting different grade mixes, different ratios of London to non-London staff and so on. But little can be done to meaningfully address widespread low pay when the overall pot decided by the Treasury pay remit is so small.
Engaging in delegated level pay talks would ordinarily mean accepting the 5% treasury pay remit; the 5% cannot be changed. That is a national decision standing above each individual department. For this reason, there is a case to refuse to enter delegated pay talks while we seek to push for more at Cabinet Office level.
Pay negotiators understandably will want to get into delegated talks – because they will want to argue for PCS members to benefit from this to the maximum extent possible. An instruction from the General Secretary’s office has already gone out (without NEC discussion, but in our view correctly) telling negotiators not to go into talks till the NEC meets, and this has already provoked questions from negotiators.
Rushing straight in to delegated pay talks will send a signal to the employer that we are prepared to settle for the 5% and allow the Government to buy us off. Instead, PCS should be clear that 5% is not enough and if we are to settle then we need guarantees not only on pay, but jobs and conditions too. The NEC meets on 12 August to debate the way forward on the national campaign; we believe delegated bargaining should be held back, but that we should discuss the specifics of this approach with Senior Lay Reps and pay teams from across the union.
Context: Reps justifiably fed up with zombie national campaign
A significant number of our reps are fed up and disillusioned with the endlessly referred-to “national campaign”.
Much sweat and work went in to winning the union’s strike ballots in November 2022 and February 2023, only for the union’s leadership to abandon any further action in June, when the government offered the £1,500. Ten months of inaction followed, and then, ludicrously, another ballot was launched in March 2024 with zero preparation.
Reps threw themselves into winning it, even those who disagreed with how it had been called. Getting a mandate for 20,000 members was not nothing, but it was broadly seen as a defeat, and as a direct consequence of the failed leadership of Martin Cavanagh and Fran Heathcote – and for that reason, both got roasted by the union’s Conference in May.
BLN supporters on the union’s NEC put forward early on that we should bring out our 20,000 members with a mandate during the General Election, to join the junior doctors’ strike in an attempt to force Starmer’s Labour Party to address public sector pay more generally. This was vetoed by the President, Martin Cavanagh, making a difficult situation worse and rendering impossible the instruction in A315 that we should pivot quickly to action.
The new NEC majority did not give up.
At a special NEC on 10 July, and at a full NEC on 17 and 18 July, we outlined the potential to use the mandate won by 20,000 members over jobs, pay and pensions, to raise the political temperature, as part of moving towards a re-ballot in those areas where 100,000+ members did not reach 50% ballot turnout and who therefore did not have a mandate.
The motion on the 10 July was passed, but the follow-up motion put on 17/18 July was vetoed. In the meantime, the General Secretary has taken weeks to carry out basic instructions, and at time of writing, on 6 August 2024, the NEC remains in the dark about whether our national demands have even been tabled to the Cabinet Office, through a letter to Cat Little, Permanent Secretary. We do not believe that they have.
This should give reps some idea of the chaos unleashed at the NEC by an out-of-control President interpreting the Standing Orders and rules of the NEC in wildly perverse and undemocratic ways.
None of this background alters some basic facts.
Build our campaign from the ground up: Pay, Jobs and Conditions in 2024
Most basically of all, if we want to win concessions, we need a serious campaign. This will require strike action.
Equally basically, we know what the demands for that campaign would be. They were passed at Annual Delegate Conference in May 2024 as motion A315. They include a 10% pay rise and a £15p/h minimum wage, but they do not just cover pay. Jobs, workloads, contractual conditions and rights, equality, office closures and pensions are all covered.
Members and reps have divided expectations. A majority agree that 5% is not enough.
Some members and reps may be willing to take what they can get right now, others will believe it would be a betrayal of the union’s basic purpose, to accept the 5%. Grumpy acceptance of what we can get right now can switch rapidly to rage, however, as winter energy costs and other price rises bite later in the year and cuts in jobs and conditions loom. We must give a lead to members, to ready us all for a real fight.
Our first step should be to write to the Cabinet Office and reject the 5%, demand more, demand that it be funded, and then, finally – if we have not already – place all of the demands put forward in motion A315, and the other policies carried at ADC and discussed at the NEC such as the reduced working week.
An inevitable corollary of this is that we should not rush in to delegated pay talks. We should send national negotiators back to meet with the Cabinet Office to tell the new government that we will not be bought off so cheaply and to place our full demands.
As part of rejection and delaying delegated pay talks, we will have to consult with delegated pay leads and seek agreement from FDA and Prospect to likewise refuse to go in to delegated pay talks, to prevent the employers playing the unions off against one another.
Second, we must turn outwards towards the mass of reps and members. The rejection of the 5% must be published. Members’ meetings must be held across the union to seek widespread support for this, and for the pivot towards a major campaign on our demands. We must take the demands out to members to actively build a mood for action.
This may also involve explaining the decision not to go in to delegated pay talks at this stage, and it may also involve explaining a continuation of the strike levy. BLN NEC members have proposed a review of current arrangements which was carried at the NEC. This, with a view for a reduced rate of the strike levy for our lowest paid members, recognising the strain on members of paying this when there has not been action. Unfortunately, the machine is again, yet to act on this.
At this stage, we would not seek to invoke the mandate for 20,000, while we see how events shake out – how the mood of members develop, how the reps come in behind the strategy, what solidarity is offered from the other unions on holding the line on delegated pay – but we would not rule out its use, for political or sector-specific purposes.
A number of alternative paths forward are possible – but as part of further building the mood amongst reps and consulting on the widest possible basis on our strategy, and to maximise engagement beyond the President-and-GS-led mass Zoom meetings, which are very top-down, we think a Special Delegate Conference will also be needed.
Preparation for this will require extraordinary general meetings in every branch across the union.
It will draw in the best members and pull every rep into a serious discussion. The special delegate conference will then take a decision, and this will hopefully minimise the opportunities for the ridiculous approach of President Cavanagh of vetoing 90% of what the elected National Executive Committee put forward for debate and discussion.
While our opponents on the union’s NEC – led by Cavanagh and Heathcote – have sought to do nothing but obstruct the new majority, we will not stop putting forward a positive strategy to take forward and win our demands. The majority left coalition on the NEC, made up of BLN, Independent Left and independent socialists, stands united against the undemocratic attempts by Left Unity to usurp the prerogatives of the elected NEC.
Our power is in our reps and members, and we turn to those to defeat bureaucratic obstruction. If you are interested in building a fighting, democratic union with socialist policies, join the Broad Left Network and get involved with us at every level of the union.
PCS Broad Left Network 