Virtually every part of the UK civil service is currently faced with redundancies and office closures. The Cabinet Office, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the Department for Business and Trade and others have already launched exit schemes to cut thousands of jobs across the civil service. The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) is probably unique, however, in having launched an exit scheme, and then had to revisit it to cut more jobs.
Plans launched by Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting and the Labour government seek to reorganise the NHS, involve a bonfire of jobs, which could in the end cost as much as £1bn across NHS England and DHSC. Both have been given permission to overspend on existing NHS budgets, not to improve services, but to pay for contract terminations. Meanwhile some of the cuts take aim at bodies like the Integrated Care Boards, with cuts of up to 50%, the third reorganisation in a decade of how the NHS ensures services are available to patients.
Eight months on from the Starmer/Streeting announcement that NHS England would be dissolved and folded in to the DHSC, senior leaders still cannot outline a new structure, nor can they show how a restructure and job cuts to the value of hundreds of millions will improve healthcare for millions or take the pressure off hardpressed civil servants and healthcare workers. The sole concrete accomplishment seems to have been the creation of yet more executive “leadership” posts on salaries of up to £210,000!
So far, PCS’ public comments, the largest union for civil servants and the largest union in DHSC, has been limited to terse articles referencing consultation with the union, without criticising yet another attack on the NHS.
What a difference a decade makes: where is the PCS alternative?
BLN has repeatedly argued that – contrary to the existing leadership of the union’s National Executive Committee, under Fran Heathcote and Martin Cavanagh – the current Labour government is no friend of workers, and that their plans are not aimed at fixing the welfare state, fixing the NHS, fixing the cost of living crisis, fixing public services and the rest. They proved within weeks, with the attack on Winter Fuel Allowance, that they serve big business.
Our approach must be to ready the union’s members for battle across the UK civil service, across devolved areas (who will be impacted by cuts through Barnet Formula consequentials as well as by choices of their devolved administrations) and across the private sector. The recent thumping victory of the YES vote to retain the union’s political fund points in one of the directions, which we called for across our branches and regions.
A decade ago, under the 2010-2015 coalition government and its swingeing cuts, eviscerating civil service jobs, PCS was at the forefront of creating the “PCS Alternative”, a pamphlet built from the lived experience of our members, that showed the harm that would be done by the government’s attacks and posed an alternative to austerity cuts. In individual areas from Aviation to Scottish Social Security, we involved tens of thousands of members in a massive political debate on everything from benefit sanctions to decarbonisation, from tax justice to energy democracy.
Starmer’s Labour government, after 18 months in power, is getting off very lightly from the current leadership of PCS. Very little member-facing work is being done to connect the government’s anti-worker policies, and their attacks on the civil service and the NHS, to the lived experience of our union’s members. Of rising prices, of job cuts, of a recession by stealth for working people. This could be a crucial part of mobilising members to fight in their own defence.
The illusion must be decisively broken that we either suck up whatever Labour dish out to us, or we wake up with Nigel Farage as Prime Minister. The truth is quite the reverse.
If the trade unions do not act and function as a pole of attraction, we are guaranteed to see a massive backlash against Labour, including votes for Reform. A new PCS Alternative, this time to Labour’s austerity, and a serious political strategy that focuses upon preparing the union to stand and support candidates in elections who will stand up for our members and for our public services, are crucial weapons in the fight with a vicious Labour government. The current PCS leadership are letting us sleepwalk into that fight.
Political strategy and industrial strategy are linked
A revamped political strategy, one that begins from the perspective of what is being done to our members’ jobs, to the public services they deliver and to their communities, would be a huge step. The positive response this would receive from tens of thousands of union members would give the lie to the argument, put forward repeatedly by Cavanagh and Heathcote at the NEC, that there is no mood to fight.
Most recently the deliberate Heathcote/Cavanagh demobilisation of the union can be seen in Members’ Briefing MB-01-25, which essentially pronounced dead the union’s national campaign on pay, jobs and hybrid. This campaign was endorsed and demanded by the union’s annual delegate conference in May, based on a motion written by BLN supporters and carried through many branches AND the NEC, which for one year (May ‘24 to May ‘25) was held by the majority left coalition, although most of the things we actually sought to do were vetoed by Cavanagh as President.
We simply do not believe that there is no mood to fight.
There is confusion. Members are deeply worried. There has been no leadership from the union’s National Executive Committee for years, especially since they shut down the strike wave in June 2023. It was this betrayal which brought a majority-left NEC to office in May 2024. There was still little leadership on display as any time momentum began to build, the President, Cavanagh, simply vetoed the next steps, and no side had a two-thirds majority to override him. And the below-inflation pay awards and job cuts keep on coming.
Cavanagh and Heathcote, whose control of the NEC is absolute, have worked through the union’s full time officers and National Disputes Committee to block moves towards action in areas such as the Department for Education and HM Revenue and Customs, further creating the illusion of an ebb in the mood of members to struggle. This is openly echoed by the supporters of Cavanagh and Heathcote on the NEC, especially in areas such as DHSC, Ministry of Justice and the Home Office, who talk down the willingness of members to fight.
In the DWP, which is the biggest PCS Group, the leadership has been pushed into action on pay by the pressure of reps and members. In a consultative ballot, 80.5% voted for strike action on a 52.3% turnout. After considerable delay a statutory strike ballot will start 5 January to force management to re-open negotiations on the already imposed 2025 pay settlement – aimed not at challenging the overall amount but to secure more money for the lowest paid grades, which does of course beg the question as to why the PCS leadership are not embarking on a national ballot to increase the pay pot. An opportunity wasted. Despite the limited nature of the pay demands, the disregarding of the 2025 DWP Conference motion A1 on pay, and the fact that many other important issues – such as office closures and hybrid working – are not included, we shall be working for a massive yes vote in this ballot.
In reality, it is the responsibility of trade union leaders to lead. If we understand that a fight is the only way to defend members and to stop the flood of job cuts, of office closures and – we anticipate – yet more real-terms pay cuts, then it is our responsibility to prepare for that fight and to give members the confidence that they can fight and they can win. We need to relearn the techniques of years gone by.
Clear briefings of reps laying out the steps to a significant strike campaign, including demands that will resonate with members.
Meetings that seek to mobilise this crucial rep layer of the union.
A strategy to coordinate disputes that are already live, and there seem to be plenty just now.
A strategy to be able to ballot for and call massively disruptive strike action and to pay for targeted strike action, to force the government to move.
Well-written materials that put forward the needed arguments as to why we need to fight and how we can win, as we called for and actually got agreed at the NEC in January 2025 – with not a single leaflet being produced afterwards to start the process of readying members.
These lessons seem to have been lost. Given the enormous pressure on our members, there is scope to change all this in very short order. All it takes is an NEC decision. Except for motions proposed by BLN supporters and allies in the Independent Left, this kind of about turn is not anywhere on the NEC agenda, including in the meeting just yesterday of Wednesday 19 November. “Campaign” papers from the General Secretary propose nothing, they are for noting only.
As BLN supporters across PCS prepare for our annual conference this December, we call on all those who want a fighting, democratic union to come to our conference to discuss with us how we coordinate across existing disputes, how we escalate disputes to win them, and how we bring the vast majority of other PCS members into these fights – on pay, on jobs, on hybrid working, on office closures and plenty else that matters to all of us. We urge you to join the Broad Left Network and help us to build the fight back against Labour austerity.
PCS Broad Left Network 