The whole-day NEC meeting on 7th November followed a by-now well-worn format. The left majority on the NEC proposed a motion to demand steps be taken to rebuild the union’s national campaign on pay, pensions, jobs and rights. This was immediately vetoed by national President Martin Cavanagh so that no discussion could take place.
The motion, proposed by PCS Vice President Dave Semple, and seconded by independent socialist Annette Wright, urged the calling of a Special Delegate Conference. Scores of branches representing tens of thousands of PCS members have written to the General Secretary, Fran Heathcote, demanding a Special Delegate Conference be called to debate the stalled national campaign.
Branches reject Heathcote and Cavanagh paralysis
Strike action against facilities and security contractors, such as G4S, OCS and ISS has not been matched by strike action in civil service departments. This is despite the rejection of awards of around 5% across civil service areas. It was revealed last week that partly this is because the General Secretary had falsely stated that the NEC had decided not to permit action under the mandate won by 20,000 members in the ballot ending in May 2024.
In fact the NEC in July expressly voted to allow for action to be taken under the mandate won by members in areas like Land Registry and the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.
Branches, angry at the distortions put out by Heathcote and by Cavanagh, have sought to break the deadlock created by Martin Cavanagh’s vetoes by voting to call a Special Delegate Conference under the rules of the union. The motion of the NEC majority, put forward on Thursday, intended to give effect to that.
Heathcote and Cavanagh, both part of a faction known as “Left Unity”, have already stated that they are unwilling to call such a Conference because they fear it will be used to “attack” them.
The “attacks” they fear are the exposure in front of members and reps of the undemocratic methods they have used to reduce the NEC to virtual paralysis – a blocking of the national campaign and stopping progress on other important issues . They also fear exposure of the ways in which the General Secretary has created a whole new, very well paid, top management tier in PCS, to embed her dictatorial control of the union.
A majority of the NEC – 19 against 16 – fully support the calling of a Special Delegate Conference. The left majority coalition on the NEC won the May 2024 elections on a platform of building a serious national campaign and of democratising PCS.
Left Unity lies on the levy
The levy was introduced in February 2023 and was abruptly terminated when Heathcote and Cavanagh sabotaged the union’s industrial campaign on pay, pensions, jobs and rights in June 2023.
Before Left Unity lost it’s majority on the NEC in May of this year they pushed through the relaunch of the strike levy.
From July onwards, a majority of NEC members have called for a review of the levy. This has been voted on once, in early July, and was then deliberately ignored in the Record of Decisions put by Heathcote to the July NEC. It was also agreed as part of the Record of Decisions of the Organising and Education Committee of the NEC, and has since been ignored by Heathcote and Cavanagh.
Every other time it has been raised, the call to review has been met with a veto – and Thursday was no exception. A review would aim to reduce the burden on the lowest paid while looking in detail at what money is needed to fund effective strike action now and in the near future.
Having vetoed the idea of a review, Heathcote and Cavanagh’s rump of Left Unity supporters on the union’s NEC began, opportunistically, calling for total cancellation of the levy, arguing that members cannot afford it. These are the same people who, over the last two years, each time the question of national strike action came up, argued that members could not afford it.
They now argue that members cannot afford a levy, they also argue that members cannot afford national strike action…so they are in fact arguing that members cannot afford a serious campaign of any kind!
What union members cannot afford is the scandalous misuse of official union communications for political point scoring by Heathcote and Cavanagh and their continuous obstruction of the left majority’s efforts to review the strike levy and rebuild the national campaign.
There are a number of questions to be asked about the levy, and the NEC majority has been asking them and getting no answer since June. Unilateral cancellation, however, would send a powerful signal to the government at a time when the Comprehensive Spending Review is ongoing and cuts are being planned. Cancelling the levy in this context, without offering a serious industrial strategy, to PCS members would be tantamount to surrender.
Undemocratic manoeuvres then lies over union finance
Far too much time at the NEC is taken up by rows deliberately provoked by Heathcote. The latest was a paper in which she sought to curtail what NEC liaison officers could say when meeting with groups and regional committees. There is no collective responsibility on the NEC; members are free to give their view of events when attending meetings within PCS. Heathcote’s paper was a deliberate attack on the freedom of speech essential to union democracy. It wasted hours.
Heathcote followed this up with a Finance paper that binned the recommendations of the union’s elected Finance Committee in respect of the assumptions that should underpin the creation of the PCS budget for 2025, a process that begins in November each year.
The Finance Committee decided that the starting assumptions should be a 0% increase of members’ subs, a 0% increase in the staffing budget in PCS, and a 0% increase to all other costs. Variation to these is almost inevitable – and this was acknowledged by the Finance Committee.
Key to the whole proposal was the suggestion that variations to these assumptions should be scrutinised by the elected Finance Committee, before a final picture was presented to the December NEC. This would allow the Finance Committee to check that budget holders really were doing everything they could to hold down costs while still funding those things that matter to members, to reps and to our campaigns.
Heathcote refused to put the paper from the Finance Committee to the NEC. Instead, she proposed assumptions of a 5% increase to membership subscriptions, a 5% increase to PCS staff budgets and an assumption of 2.5% increases on all general expenditure.
Left Unity allies of Heathcote and Cavanagh came into debate one after the other, denouncing the proposals from the Finance Committee as “the same as the Tories”. They attempted to argue that the 5% increase proposed to the staffing budget was purely about staff pay in PCS (it isn’t) and that the left majority do not want to pay staff in PCS fairly (not true). They argued that the majority were calling for “austerity” in PCS.
Not one of these arguments was true. The majority’s goal was simple: before we put up subs by a single penny, we must make sure that no spending anywhere in the union is wasteful and that there are no savings to be made without impacting branches and campaigns. The utterly false arguments about PCS staff pay put forward by Left Unity are part of an ongoing attempt by the senior managers of PCS to use the staff union, GMB, against the elected lay leadership of PCS.
The viciousness of the debate, however, reflects the pressure now being exerted on Heathcote, Cavanagh and their allies. Members and activists are getting restive at the total lack of action – and it is painfully evident, when Heathcote and Cavanagh’s undemocratic tactics are explained, who is responsible for this: they are to blame.
The majority left coalition came away from the NEC all the more determined to build up an unstoppable force from within the membership and activist layers of the union, to sweep away the bureaucratic obstacles and the lies told in ever increasing volume by Heathcote and Cavanagh. Each NEC meeting and the obstruction we face reinforces our belief that renewal of the democracy in PCS is absolutely vital if we are going to successfully fight and win our battles on pay, jobs, pensions and other issues. The new Labour government has already made clear it’s looking for cuts and we need to ensure our union is able to defend members’ jobs and the services we provide.
If your branch has not already agreed to support the call for a Special Delegate Conference it’s urgent it does so. The November NEC showed, once again, the need for a Special Delegate Conference to rebuild the national campaign on pay, pensions, jobs and other vital issues and to make clear who runs the union.
PCS Broad Left Network 