Month: Jan 2025

The union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) met on 15 January. The key debate at the NEC was a motion moved by NEC members Rob Ritchie and Dave Semple which outlined the threat facing our members from the new Labour government and stated plainly that the only way to get serious progress was to set course now for a dispute.

Labour have already announced cuts, including a demand for 2% “savings” from civil service budgets in July last year, a further demand of 5% cuts with the October budget, and newspapers have picked up on the likelihood of 10,000 job cuts. Redundancies have already been announced in Department for Transport, the Ministry of Defence and more are expected shortly.

Reports from talks with the Cabinet Office revealed a view from officials that the government does not recognise any unions at a cross civil service level! Officials retreated on this position, but this bodes ill for any hopes of substantial progress on the 2025 civil service pay remit due for publication this coming March. It also bodes ill if we want to make progress on our long-term demand for national bargaining machinery.

A copy of the motion put forward by Rob and Dave is here and included at the bottom of this article for the information of PCS reps and members.

The instructions are simple. The inaction from June 2023 to March 2024, punctuated by a widely unsuccessful strike ballot from March to May 2024, has been compounded by continued inaction from May 2024 to now. This is despite a mandate for action covering 20,000 members, supplemented by union policy, carried at ADC 24. The motion carried at the NEC demands that this inertia be overcome and that the fight starts now.

Recognising that many parts of the commercial sector are already in a massive fight – to which we are giving full support – and that the situation might be different in devolved Scottish and Welsh areas, the motion outlines how the union must urgently prepare the ground amongst our members for the likely battle that is to come. It sets out how NEC liaison officers should seek immediate engagement with all areas across the union to discuss with activists  how we re-build momentum towards the kind of campaign that can win members’ key demands.

Why is a dispute taking so long?

Ten months of inaction by Fran Heathcote and Martin Cavanagh, respectively General Secretary and President of PCS, and their “Democracy Alliance” majority on the union’s NEC, from June 2023 to March 2024, led to members making a historic change to the union’s leadership in the May 2024 elections. 

A coalition of Broad Left Network (BLN), Independent Left (IL) and independent socialists won a majority on the union’s National Executive Committee in May 2024. The new majority left coalition did not win the post of president of the union; this was retained by the leadership that had otherwise just been swept away.

Reps across the union are now aware of the role played by Cavanagh as president, blocking every significant move towards a dispute, including the plan for strike action in those areas with a mandate during the 2024 General Election, to join junior doctors and railway workers and to force civil service pay higher up the electoral agenda.

It is for this reason that BLN supporters in PCS have worked to mobilise branches to call for a Special Delegate Conference (SDC), to unblock the route to a dispute. The total number who have written in to Fran Heathcote, General Secretary to call for a dispute has still not been published to the NEC by Heathcote.

Each step to  build momentum towards a dispute has been damaged by Heathcote and Cavanagh. 

Their tactics swing back and forth between malicious compliance. This includes the General Secretary literally cutting and pasting a motion to the unions NEC into a letter to the Prime Minister rather than finessing the language, and outright obstruction; delivering misleading information to meetings of reps, communications to members more intent on attacking the  democratically elected NEC rather than setting out how to respond to a hostile employer and the refusal to call meetings of the Senior Officers Committee of the NEC, which should be meeting fortnightly.

It might seem a little surprising, therefore, that the motion from Rob and Dave passed at the 15 January NEC.

Cavanagh and Heathcote out of ideas

The only reason that the motion was heard was because the General Secretary, in her national campaign paper, did not make a single recommendation to the January NEC about if and how the union would build a campaign to protect jobs, improve pay and conditions or tackle the disturbing reports in the press over Christmas signalling potential further attacks on our pensions. In previous cases where the GS has proposed something, Cavanagh has misused the NEC’s Standing Orders to veto counterproposals from the NEC majority.

Faced with their own poverty of ideas on how to fight for members, Heathcote, Cavanagh and others did the only thing left to them: they agreed with the majority and tried to claim that the ideas being put forward by the majority were what they had been saying all along.

NEC member and BLN supporter Fiona Brittle had only to read out the recommendations on previous papers from the General Secretary to expose that for the lie it is. The whole approach of the General Secretary and President and their Left Unity and Democrat hangers-on has been to obstruct the development of any campaign.

Previous papers from the General Secretary in 2024 “welcomed” the 5% pay remit set by Labour and sought to repeat the dishonest tactic of autumn 2023, by seeking to ballot members on whether the union should “continue the campaign”, while simultaneously taking steps to demobilise any campaign in the here and now.

Faced with the success of Cavanagh’s delaying tactics – using endless vetoes at the NEC, ignoring and indeed not even publishing branch calls for a Special Delegate Conference – and the impact of this delay on members and reps, the only serious course of action is to go back to basics and to try to build up campaigning momentum from scratch.

This is what the motion does.

Least democratic president in PCS history?

For the third straight NEC, a huge amount of business was not progressed because of Cavanagh’s mismanagement of the agenda. 

NEC papers are almost never circulated to NEC members on time. As well as making it difficult for NEC members to keep on top of the business, this is also anti-democratic, because Heathcote and Cavanagh’s allies get advance sight of all key papers going to the NEC. The delays to papers are deliberate, designed to keep the elected majority off-balance while Cavanagh’s allies, including the General Secretary, get pre-prepared speeches to read out.

Instead of cooperating with the NEC majority, Cavanagh makes absolutely everything into a fight. Leaving aside the deliberate misuse of the Standing Orders – where Cavanagh’s interpretation means anything that disagrees with the General Secretary is vetoed – even such basic things as proposing alterations to the Record of Decisions wind up a fight.

In bygone years, amendments were frequently proposed and made to papers during meetings, just based on the contributions from NEC members. This basic and free-flowing democracy doesn’t operate under Cavanagh. Proposals for amendments must be submitted by noon the day before an NEC – and more than once the papers themselves aren’t even released by that time.

Heathcote collaborates with Cavanagh in gumming up the works at NEC meetings; she is permitted to simply read almost verbatim from the papers she has published under her name. We once timed Mark Serwotka speaking for an hour on a national campaign paper – when NEC members are permitted 5 minutes – but at least he wasn’t basically re-reading his reports out loud, as Heathcote seems to do, wasting precious time.

It could not be clearer that we need to fight hard to win a further left majority in this year’s elections, beginning from April – but that we also need a fighting president who will not obstruct the NEC majority from defending members when their jobs and pay are under attack, with more likely to come. 

If you are reading this, then act now. Invite BLN members to speak at your Regional Committees, Branch Committees, Group Executive Committees and members meetings. To discuss how we build the necessary campaign to ensure this government do right by all members in PCS, Civil and Public Servants and our Commercial Sector members too. We urge all reps to join us in fighting to rebuild a fighting, democratic PCS!

Copy of January NEC motion on establishing a 2025 national dispute

This NEC notes the darkening tone of pronouncements from the government in respect of public spending. This includes:

•  Repeated allusions to the Chancellor “protecting” her fiscal rules, with the inference that this will require Labour to make spending cuts. 
• 10,000 redundancies announced in the civil service, which will not be the last job cuts unless we stop the government in its tracks. 
• Open discussion by the Perm Sec at the Cabinet Office of potential cuts to public sector pensions, including the principal civil service pension scheme.
• A submission by the government to the pay review bodies of a proposal of a 2.8% pay rise, which appears to include unfunded elements.

The NEC further notes the outstanding issues faced by our members, which the government has conspicuously failed to address. These include:

• The issues identified as central to the union’s national campaign, in ADC motion A315, including particularly pay, pensions and jobs.
• The victimisation of our reps at HMRC Benton Park View.
• The disputes that have emerged in the commercial sector, including but not limited to G4S, ISS, Fujitsu and OCS.
• The disputes, on hybrid working and other substantive questions, that have emerged in Land Registry, ONS, Met Police, DBS and others.

The NEC asserts that the clear evidence to be taken from this is that there has been no “reset” of industrial relations with the new government, and we must now put the union on a war footing, for what will be a crucial year – the first year of the new comprehensive spending review, and the year in which a further comprehensive spending review takes place, likely to set a pattern of spending cuts.

The NEC agrees that the report from members is generally one of disillusion with the UK government. There is significant anger developing amongst workers, not just in the civil service and related areas, but on a wider basis, reflecting the inertia and low ambitions of the new government. Inflation estimates by the Bank of England are being revised upwards, while a downward revision of economic growth is expected imminently.

In this context, significant progress on pay or anything that members care about appears unlikely unless we succeed in establishing a major dispute.

Our demands should be constituted using A315 as a starting point, taking into account the pay round in 2024, and building on our existing demands to reflect the detriments facing members in Westminster, in devolved areas and in commercial sector areas. Our aim is to mobilise the widest possible layer of support across the activist layer and the membership for a move towards building the widest possible strike mandate(s) in 2025.

The NEC therefore instructs as follows:

• That our team for meeting with the Cabinet Office is expanded from the current constituted number to add three further lay reps, names of which the NEC should agree today, if this motion carries.
• That the General Secretary, on behalf of the team that is meeting with the Cabinet Office, provides the most up to date report on talks to the NEC by 17^th January, including the timeline of any pending talks ahead of pay remit publication.
• In the absence of a Special Delegate Conference that could have laid firm plans to build a campaign with the widest possible legitimacy across PCS, that NECLOs urgently seek the convening of EC meetings for their areas, to report on discussions with the Cabinet Office and to make clear the NEC view that significant progress is unlikely without a serious fight. 
• All NECLOs should seek input from their areas on what the demands should be, as to the current mood of members, and as to what steps lead reps believe should be taken, either at national or delegated level, to build the mood for a serious dispute. Particular attention should be paid to any views on what resources the lead reps across the union believe they need to deliver an overwhelming “Yes” vote in a ballot, likewise to views on how to build for and support the inclusion of devolved and commercial sector areas, as per A315.
• The General Secretary should ask Group Secretaries or another officer to record and report in writing on each discussion ahead of an NEC w/c 17 February.
• Ahead of the NEC in w/c 17 February, the Assistant General Secretary should publish to the NEC the list of responses to the 2024 consultation of bargaining areas run under the aegis of the UK Civil Service Bargaining Committee.
• The General Secretary should urgently devise and present to the Senior Officers’ Committee and to the Campaign and Communications Committee a message calendar including web articles, a social media strategy, punchy memes reflecting the demands being put forward by the union, and opportunities for Group Presidents to speak to their members via well-advertised online forums, geared towards building a mood to fight, as we proceed with pay remit discussions, for review and agreement by those committees.
• Organising materials – including union join leaflets which emphasise the union’s campaigning stance and the significance of the issues facing us – should be prepared and circulated to all branches. The content should be cleared by the Senior Officers Committee.
• The General Secretary should work bilaterally with sister unions, through the Public Sector Liaison Group of the TUC, through the TUCG and through any other forum where we might bring on board fellow unions to beginning now our prep for a serious campaign; there is obviously a mood amongst their members if NEU leaders have felt compelled to move to a consultative ballot on pay. This work should be reported on each week to the Senior Officers Committee.

A further NEC w/c 17 February will review the position and consider what further steps need to be taken to build the mood towards a successful strike ballot in 2025; until we actually begin to ramp up a campaign and test the mood amongst members, the timing of a statutory ballot or the usefulness or otherwise of an indicative ballot cannot be judged, but the pivot to a ballot is the necessary next step.