The two-day National Executive Committee of the union opened on 4 December with two major rows and a threat by the President to adjourn the NEC, which he did not carry out. Marion Lloyd, NEC member and Group President of DSIT Group, intervened before the main agenda to query the absence of a report on the branches that had submitted motions calling for a Special Delegate Conference (SDC).
Since September, union reps and members across PCS have been asking questions about the lack of any serious campaigning action from the union on pay, pensions, redundancy rights and – ever more importantly as Labour tighten the screws on departments – jobs. This inaction is not for want of trying by the NEC majority, 19 out of 35 NEC members, which consists of supporters of the Broad Left Network, the Independent Left and independent socialists.
In consequence of this inaction, however, branches have been debating the question of an SDC, to hold the leadership of PCS – especially the President and the General Secretary – to account for their actions. This has met with undemocratic bureaucratic manoeuvring by Cavanagh and Heathcote, including through their use – without agreement of the NEC – to put out messages to all members in branches passing a motion calling for an SDC to attack the views of elected reps in those branches.
Cavanagh, in the chair of the NEC, responded to Marion by arguing that all the submissions from branches calling an SDC were being treated as correspondence because the vast majority (he alleged, without providing figures) had refused to stipulate whether their call for an SDC or their passage of a motion calling for a SDC had been passed by a branch Extraordinary General Meeting.
There is no requirement for a branch EGM to be held, to vote for a Special Delegate Conference, so this is an attempt by the President to raise the bar to be able to throw out the requests by branches for an SDC. This provoked immediate anger.
Gemma Criddle, Annette Wright, Fiona Brittle, Bev Laidlaw and Marion herself each intervened to point out the deep flaws in what the president had said. Marion highlighted how she had made clear, in writing to Cavanagh and to General Secretary Heathcote, that her motion calling for an SDC had been passed by a branch meeting and yet had still not been circulated to the NEC as per 6.2 of the NEC Standing Orders.
Annette Wright, in particular, skewered the spurious argument of the President that he “cannot be sure that these motions were passed at valid EGMs, I only have your word to rely on for that” by pointing out that her branch EGM had passed two motions, and one of these had been circulated to the NEC (i.e. it was clearly accepted as valid), whereas the one calling for an SDC had not been circulated to the NEC.
Gemma Criddle pointed out that, in Revenue and Customs Group, the GEC had voted to write to branches to suggest that they should call EGMs to discuss the question of an SDC. This decision was blocked by the unelected Group Secretary, an employee of the union. Similar decisions to block decisions by Group Executives, e.g. in Education Group, were likewise blocked by unelected staff of the union.
Fiona Brittle rightly pointed out that the real matter at issue here was the absolute unwillingness of the Cavanagh and Heathcote to call a Special Delegate Conference.
The whole discussion descended into farce when Cavanagh kept repeating that a member of the NEC majority had submitted a motion to the NEC calling for an SDC, so the question of an SDC was on the agenda.
The President had evidently forgotten that he had vetoed a motion at the previous NEC on 7 November, containing exactly the same instruction, but, even more ridiculously, Cavanagh was directly asked, “can we have an assurance that you will not veto that motion and will allow it to be debated?”, he replied, “We’ve not gotten to that part of the agenda yet”.
Annette Wright insisted that Cavanagh put to the vote a suggestion that all the motions passed by branches be reported to the NEC for debate before the NEC adjourned on 5 December. Cavanagh would not make that commitment and would not put the proposal to a vote, as he would have lost. At this point tempers began to fray, as the majority have faced 7 months from May to December of wholesale obstruction by Cavanagh in his role as President.
Cavanagh threatened to evict Marion from the meeting, then threatened to adjourn the meeting, realising he was trapped. After some back and forth, Cavanagh issued a ruling, that he would report back the motions voted on by branches to the NEC – but crucially, without stipulating that this would happen before the next NEC in mid-January 2025, much too late for an effective Special Delegate Conference.
The NEC majority at this point voted to challenge the chair’s ruling 16-14, but as this was not a two-thirds majority, the ruling stood. In a nutshell this is how every single NEC meeting has progressed. No matter what the left majority on the NEC put forward in respect of building the union’s national campaign, 90% of it is simply vetoed by the President, and his Democracy Alliance faction (16 of 35 NEC members) vote to uphold his decision, preventing a two-thirds majority from overturning the obstruction.
Heathcote and Cavanagh abandon the idea of a national campaign altogether
The first day of the two-day NEC also debated the question of the union’s “national campaign”. This is the title given to papers moved by the General Secretary that deal with our national fight, across multiple civil service departments, on pay, on pensions, on redundancy rights and jobs. Since Conference 2024, it also includes matters like hybrid working, office closures and the fight for 100,000 civil service jobs.
The paper put by the General Secretary contained one recommendation only. The recommendation was to “pause the levy” that members have been paying at a rate of £3 or £5 since June 2024, building up the strike fund for a major campaign.
It is preposterous that the General Secretary of the union would come to the last NEC of the year with nothing serious to propose to the NEC on our most important campaigns, except that we call off the levy that might fund serious action. It should not be surprising, considering that Heathcote has collaborated with the President to veto anything resembling a strategy that has been proposed since May. This extended to a motion proposed by the majority left to the NEC on 4/5 December.
Nevertheless, the question of the levy goes to the heart of the differences between the majority left and the Democracy Alliance rump, who lost their NEC majority for in May 2024 for the first time in twenty years. It is worth taking a moment to explain the full context.
The levy was originally introduced in February 2023, three months after the union won a national strike mandate (in November 2022) on our key demands for a 10% pay rise, for pension justice, for a reversal of the attack on the civil service compensation scheme and for a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies. This was used to top up several million pounds set aside by the then-NEC from the settlements won from UK government departments (esp. DWP) over the removal of our contractual right to pay our union subs by check-off.
The levy, along with the national campaign, was abandoned by the NEC in June 2023 at the time when the Tory government offered a £1,500, one-off, non-consolidated, pro-rata payment. Instead of doubling down and taking advantage of the government’s weakness, the NEC cancelled all strike action, cancelled the levy and cancelled all the strike ballots. An extraordinarily dishonest ballot was conducted in Autumn 2023 that told members to “Vote Yes to continue the campaign”.
Members voted yes, and the then NEC promptly used this as an excuse to cancel the campaign. Between June 2023 and March 2024, there was a deafening silence from the top of the union. Then in March, the then-NEC, still under the Democracy Alliance faction, launched a further national strike ballot without any serious preparation. That ballot was successful for 20,000 members, but did not meet the 50% turnout threshold for 110,000+ members.
That ballot result was received prior to the union’s Annual Delegate Conference meeting in May 2024, and prior to the outcome of national elections that began in April 2024, and which concluded in May 2024. The union’s NEC, with a month left in its term of office, voted to reinstate the levy. No attempt was made to explain seriously to members what the strategy would be, when this levy was reimplemented.
Two things then happened in quick succession. First, the Democracy Alliance-led NEC was ousted from office, reduced from holding 33 seats of the 35 seat NEC to 14. Second, the union’s Annual Delegate Conference demanded a much more serious strategy than had existed before, rejecting entirely the lackadaisical approach of the union’s leadership up to May 2024. This left the levy, which was not voted on by the new NEC or by the Conference, as being implemented by default.
The first time the levy was discussed at the union’s National Executive Committee, under the new majority, was in July when Marion Lloyd expressly attempted to propose that the levy be subject to a review, to make sure that it was fit for purpose and that the burden on the lowest paid members was not an undue burden. This proposal was agreed by the NEC. It was never implemented as, at the next NEC, it was missed off the Record of Decisions (RoD) by the General Secretary. An attempt was made at that NEC to amend the RoD was vetoed by the President.
At whiles since then, the question of the levy has surfaced at NEC meetings and at every stage, the view of the majority left has been consistent: the levy should be reviewed considering the industrial position and to reduce the burden on the lowest paid members of PCS. Every time it has come up, as part of motions proposed to the NEC by the majority left, it has been vetoed by Cavanagh as national president.
It came up again at NEC on 7 November, when the NEC minority made a half-hearted attempt to cancel the levy, and this was voted down by the NEC majority. That leads us to the NEC of 4-5 December, at which the only proposal from the General Secretary on the national campaign was to cancel the strike levy (again), on the basis that the strike mandate for the 20,000 achieved in May 2024 has now lapsed and there is no immediate move to a further ballot for action.
Put another way, Heathcote and Cavanagh have actively caused a massive obstruction to and delay of our national campaign, and are now using that delay to argue that, as we’re not planning for immediate targeted strike action, there is no need for the levy.
Why maintain the strike levy if there is no immediate strike action planned?
This is the way Cavanagh and Heathcote and their supporters are framing the question, and we have no hesitation in answering.
You don’t take the bullets out of your gun when a shoot-out is looming.
After taking office, the new Labour government offered a sop to civil servants, by setting a civil service pay remit of 5%. This does not automatically translate as a 5% pay rise, it is permission to Departments to increase their pay bill by 5%, without offering them extra money to pay for it. This means that Departments can offer 5% if they can find cuts in other areas, including public services, or can go higher than 5% at this or that grade if it is balanced by savings elsewhere in the pay bill.
Faced with an offer of 5% in late September 2024, and with most areas having failed to get through the 50% ballot turnout threshold in May’s strike ballot, many reps across the union were willing to take the 5% and settle. The NEC left majority would have preferred a campaigning posture, but at every stage – including in the calling of Senior Lay Reps forums – this approach was undermined by the attitude of Cavanagh and Heathcote, defaulting to their “oh well, if you want to put in a strike submission go ahead” attitude to groups and branches, abdicating any responsibility of leadership.
Temporarily, therefore, pay has receded as the most pressing issue facing members. The key word is “temporarily”. The 2% average pay rise in 2022, the 4.5% average pay rise in 2023 and the 5% average pay rise in 2024 must be set against cumulative 17% rise in costs over that period, to say nothing of more than a decade since 2010 of pay freezes and 1% pay rises that have eroded civil service pay.
This has been relied upon by the Democracy Alliance minority on the NEC, with quips such as “look at how well Home Office have done, they aren’t going to want to take strike action, are they?”
Yet inflation has not gone away, and winter is coming, with heating bills and transport costs that look set to dramatically increase in price, well beyond the average rates of price inflation. If this is met, in early 2025, with a clamp-down on civil service pay, pay will very quickly flare back up again. The fastest way to encourage such a clamp down is to step down the major source of funding for our targeted strike action even before discussions have begun between the Cabinet Office and PCS on civil service pay.
Heathcote even reported that there are “pay and reward” preliminary discussions scheduled to begin in the next few weeks with the Cabinet Office. What a signal to send to ministers just prior to crucial talks, that we aren’t prepared to fight on pay.
There is another key issue facing civil service departments over the next period. Jobs. Motion A315, passed at Conference in 2024, outlined the need not simply to fight for a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies, but to fight for 100,000 additional civil service jobs. This is contrast to the government, which has moved to redundancies in the Department for Transport, and which is cutting jobs across the civil service-including the MOD which has just announced 5,600 job cuts which come on top of a recruitment freeze which was due to end in 2025.
Johnson and Sunak each announced headline job cuts in the civil service – the intention to cut between 66,000 and 90,000 civil service jobs. Labour have removed that headline aspiration but have not withdrawn the funding straitjacket that underpins the logic of job cuts.
At present, most areas are gradually running down staffing levels via “attrition”, i.e. where people leave through retirement, ill-health, taking other jobs etc, which impacts staff by redistributing the work of anyone who leaves on to those who remain. Higher workloads and higher stress are hardly what the doctor ordered for the UK Civil Service, so this is bad enough, but the option for redundancies and even more swingeing job cuts has not been ruled out by the new government.
This is to say nothing of the possibilities of further cuts to office estates, and the consequent impact to staffing and workloads.
This government is not the friend of workers, and anyone who imagines that gains will happen for civil servants – or any other section of the working class – simply by osmosis, is wrong. We must be ready to fight on defensive issues like further pay cuts relative to inflation, further erosion of our rights, attacks on our jobs or attempts to offload higher workloads on to hard-pressed civil servants.
A well-stocked levy is an insurance policy that the union has the wherewithal to resist attacks and to take on a government that repeats Tory or New Labour tactics of trying to force government workers to suffer as the result of wider economic maladies.
This is not to say the levy is perfect; we continue to be concerned that a significant burden is being borne by low paid members in those bargaining areas that are part of the national campaign, and where the levy is therefore being paid. We remain committed to a review to limit the impact of the levy on the low paid. The logic of a levy to support sustained strike action to wreak maximum disruption on the government to force them to bargain properly with the union is unimpeachable.
We are not prepared to surrender such a weapon at an absolutely crucial part of the bargaining cycle, while the Comprehensive Spending Review is under way (setting budgets for civil service departments for at least a year), while preliminary discussions on pay and reward are pending, and while no meaningful engagement has taken place on any of the key priorities of the union in the civil service has yet taken place.
PCS Broad Left Network 