Author: pcsbln

Waffle won’t win; we need a serious union campaign in DWP

The union’s executive in DWP met on 23^rd September, to discuss what to do about the plans by DWP senior management to push ahead with plans to extend operating hours in Jobcentres and 21 Universal Credit Service Centres (SCs) and to extend the number of claimants unnecessarily attending Jobcentres in person, for face to face appointments.

PCS members in DWP voted overwhelmingly for action; 77% said they were prepared to act in order to prevent DWP plans that pose a risk to their safety.

Even in the few weeks since the ballot the situation has changed dramatically. We have gone from a situation with preparation for the schools in England and Wales to return and the opening up of the economy and socialising with pubs and restaurants reopening, to the chaos we have now. We now have soaring covid-19 infection rates, numerous local lockdowns and the totally blatant disregard for the safety of our members in the haste to book unnecessary huge numbers of face to face appointments which help no-one and put communities more at risk of the spread of the virus.

DWP BLN demands that the disregard of our safety by DWP management needs to be met with a strong response and the need to move to a statutory ballot to stop the extension of services to the public and the extension of opening hours. We can discuss the form of this ballot but we need to give a firm lead and clear message to management that we will stop their plans together. DWP BLN supporters on the GEC argued that branches should have been given the full data and analysis of the consultative ballot to fully arm everyone with all the information to have a genuine say in the consultation of branches that is due to take place. Regions are a vital part of the support for branches and regional/nation committees should be fully involved to work in tandem with branch committees and be fully aware of support branches need rather than being bypassed by the Group.

At same time we need to ensure that not a single member of PCS is left to fend for themselves when it comes to opposing DWP’s plans to extend opening and increase face to face appointments. We must challenge the unsafe and dangerous situation that DWP senior managers are imposing on site by putting unbearable pressure on local managers to book in appointments in every jobcentre regardless of safety. We can use our normal collective methods to mobilise the anger in our offices and oppose the plans – organising safe socially distanced meetings of our members outside in the car parks or in the muster points wherever there is enough room to assemble safely. Not only does the union flexing its muscles rattle the DWP but it also shows members that we can work and act together to stand up to management and oppose the plans. We have argued that the fact that workers can respond immediately to dangerous situations and remove themselves to a place of safety can be used effectively to deal with the immediate attacks we face, whilst we go through the bureaucracy and timeframe of organising a statutory ballot.

Build a safe, socially-distanced face-to-face campaign

Beating the 50% turnout threshold imposed by the Tory government in 2016 is very possible. However it needs to be said that the LU-led GEC launched the consultative ballot and promptly hid behind their computer keyboards.

No group-wide leaflet was produced to allow for desk dropping or leafleting outside buildings. No arrangements were made for face to face meetings. In branches which are controlled by LU GEC members, those reps who wanted to organise socially distanced, safe meetings using protective equipment were told they weren’t allowed to. Instead, emails, poorly attended online Zoom meetings and badly organised and publicised telephone banking was all that happened. BLN supporters on the GEC proposed a clear route to increase the amount of work being done, so that turnout in a statutory ballot would be maximised. This was voted down by Left Unity.

The strategy we put forward is a strategy to win. We urge all branches not to accept the secretiveness of the GEC, and not to accept their unwillingness to lead a serious campaign; we are circulating a draft motion that allows branches to discuss what they think the Group strategy should be, for this to be sent to the GEC, and used in the consultation meetings to demand a serious strategy.

Build a fighting strategy that defends members and builds the union!

The same people as currently lead PCS in DWP put out a branch bulletin from the national union on 29.06.2020 where they claimed that one of the key reasons why the union is shrinking is because of the way the largest government departments are shrinking. Yet DWP is expanding at a fast rate just now; thousands of agency jobs and thousands of permanent jobs are being added – yet recruitment to the union has been slow.

BLN supporters on the GEC were flabbergasted, therefore, when the Left Unity majority that controls the GEC decided to vote against our simple proposal that we need to produce up to date recruitment material and leaflets, as well as specific up-to-date material for the management grades in DWP, who are being put under enormous pressure by politically motivated decision-making.

Senior managers have been heard to acknowledge that yes they have an obligation to protect staff, but they also have an obligation to vulnerable claimants, which is why they’re pressing ahead with the extension of opening hours and the increased number of face to face appointments. At the coalface, HEO and SEO managers in Jobcentres know very well that face to face appointments simply aren’t necessary just now. These grades need union support, but the GEC simply refused!

Meanwhile thousands of new staff, especially young workers, who have never been part of a union, are being thrust into new workplaces. Ensuring branches have the resources necessary to get stuck into the recruitment work should be a high priority – new and enthusiastic union members are exactly the types who would vote yes in any ballot, if advised to do so by their reps. Failing in this task is failing at basic trade unionism.

Will the Left Unity leadership of the GEC be saved by the Tories?

Given the lack of any visible strategy and lack of proposals to build a serious campaign from the union’s leadership in DWP, some members have wondered whether the government’s so-called “firebreak” to prevent a resurgence of Covid-19 will cause DWP to change course. This is how depleted members’ faith in the current leadership has become.

The message from Westminster has been, work at home if you can. This potentially puts an arrow right through the previous Tory plans to drag civil servants – even those safely working at home – into the office one day a week. In HMRC, for example, plans to bring back thousands of staff have now been reversed. Will this happen in DWP? Will it have an impact on the number of face-to-face appointments in Jobcentres?

Alex Chisholm, Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary, has indicated that Departments will make up their own minds about this – there will be no central order from the government for departments to send staff home etc. This means the only guarantee for DWP staff will be if we build a serious campaign to oppose management plans to extend operating hours and increase the face to face appointments.

What we know for sure is that even if DWP do change course, these plans will be resurrected as soon as the political priorities in Westminster return to panicking at the state of the economy and to blaming it all on claimants and civil servants. The only course available is to build a serious fight for a binding agreement that protects the health and safety of DWP staff and of members of the public.

Staff must be protected. Members must be protected. We urge all branches to fight for the serious campaigning work that we need to win and stop the reckless, unsafe extension of services and extension of hours from 30th November, and for a national statutory ballot to protect all of our members across all Jobcentres and across the 21 affected Universal Credit SCs.

Claimant numbers to increase in DWP Jobcentres from Monday; defend your rights!

On 8^th September DWP announced to all staff their intention to bring claimants into Jobcentres who don’t require an emergency appointment. Jobcentres have been open throughout the crisis, but this has been limited to a small number of vulnerable people. The emphasis of the DWP announcement was to give local managers a great deal of latitude in whether they decide to do this, and how they decide to it.

In Glasgow, for example, DWP senior managers are planning to bring small numbers of the claimants in the 18-24 age group into Jobcentres. Union reps are very clear that there is no good reason for doing this and members, who were told on Friday 18^th September about new face to face interviews with claimants commencing on Monday 21^st September, have expressed their anger that this group are being dragged in for no good reason.

Senior managers in multiple areas, such as Greater Manchester, have indicated that because they are under ministerial instruction, they have no choice but to proceed to increase the number of claimants coming in. This is not true. It is open to managers to analyse the risks for their areas and to agree that no additional claimants will be brought into offices, particularly in locations where Covid-19 is resurgent. Handling appointments by telephone is safe and effective.

While some area managers are suggesting that the approach will be voluntary, this is not true everywhere. Some staff are simply being told that they will have appointments, as if they have no choice. The union’s advice is very clear: this is a voluntary matter both for you and for claimants and if you are worried about safety, do not volunteer.

Lack of consultation with PCS – don’t volunteer!

Local management are obliged to consult union reps and Health and Safety reps about this change, but insufficient time has been allowed for this by national DWP managers. Our advice, as PCS reps, to all members in Jobcentres is to:

·         Insist that your line manager provides you with confirmation that a review of the Jobcentre Front Facing Risk Assessment has been carried out with TU present.

·         Contact your local union rep and TU-appointed Health and Safety rep to make sure they have agreed the risk assessment.

If there has been no risk assessment, or it has not been agreed because managers have not put in place safety measures insisted upon by the union’s Health and Safety reps, we urge members to refuse to be involved with the appointments.

Given that the Group Executive Committee were aware of these changes, the union branch bulletin that was published late in the afternoon of Friday 18^th September has come out much too late to support branches in organising an effective response ahead of the morning of Monday 21^st. Despite this inadequately timed response, the GEC bulletin contains a useful list of questions and safeguards that can be discussed by reps with members and put in place through local negotiations with management.

Broad Left Network supporters who are PCS reps in DWP are strongly opposed to management’s plans to ramp up the face to face work in Jobcentres. It is unnecessary and unsafe. We urge union members not to volunteer to be involved with these appointments until all steps are taken to ensure members’ safety at work.

DWP ballot – time to ramp up the campaign

The union in DWP has recently conducted an informal ballot over this issue; nearly 80% of all staff said they would be willing to take action against the measures DWP are taking, including extension of operating hours, which the union believes are threatening health and safety. It is vital that all members look after each other and collectively insist on safety at work.

The view of BLN supporters in DWP is that the DWP Group Executive Committee should proceed to a statutory ballot. Further, the Group Executive Committee must now authorise and support all necessary measures, including leafleting outside offices in a socially-distant, safe manner, car park meetings and ensuring where members are being put into dangerous situations, we ensure that everyone understands their rights under H&S legislation and we fully back our members taking action to protect their safety.  This robust approach will build the support we need to beat the 50% turnout threshold imposed on union ballots by the 2016 anti-union laws.

PCS in DWP would then be able to prepare legal strike action should DWP continue ploughing ahead with changes which threaten the health and safety of our members and that of the public.

It is clear from the indicative ballot that members are deeply unhappy and are prepared to take action. That force must now be brought to bear against DWP which is also determined to bring in late opening and Saturday working to put even more pressure on our members and adversely impact safety. With the Cabinet Office insisting that all staff must work at least one day from the office, it is likely that without a serious campaign from the union, there will be a steady erosion of the safety measures we currently have in place.

A robust response from the union is therefore necessary, challenging every breach of safety legislation by DWP and developing a collective response across vulnerable areas like the Jobcentres and Universal Credit. Only this will force DWP to put safety first and protect our members in their offices.

In the middle of June, the Sunday Times published a leak which suggested that the government was rowing back on commitments to reform the Gender Recognition Act 2004. Proposed reforms, over which a huge national consultation was launched in 2018, included reducing the archaic, expensive and needlessly stressful process trans people are required to endure to change their gender. Trans people should be able to self-identify as their affirmed gender.

Due to be published on July 30, publication of the government’s report into reform of the

Gender Recognition Act has now been delayed until September. This delay brings nothing but uncertainty for trans members of our union and trans people in our communities; the government has promised no roll-back of trans rights without saying what exactly that means. Pronouncements by Tory Minister Liz Truss suggest the government is planning to oppose self-ID, to deny medical services to trans children and to make it harder for trans women to access public services.

Even Tory pronouncements that should command unanimous support, such as a potential ban on the barbaric practice of gay conversion therapy, are being met with calls that a ban should not include conversion therapy aimed at trans people.

Ahead of publication of the government’s report, members of the union’s NEC had sought to propose and pass a motion which would have made clear the union’s opposition to Tory backsliding, to the divide-and-rule tactics and full support for self-ID instead of the current over-medicalised process by which trans people have to be diagnosed with a mental disorder (gender dysphoria) before they can self-identify as their affirmed gender.

Unfortunately, despite being proposed three NEC meetings ago, this motion has still not been debated by the NEC. PCS President, Fran Heathcote, keeps scheduling very short meetings, or refusing to schedule meetings every two weeks as was agreed as NEC policy earlier in the year, and the President also chooses where on the agenda issues are debated.

The current Left Unity/Democrat leadership of the union has not had the best record on trans rights. The NEC was censured in 2019 by Annual Delegate Conference over the General Secretary placing his signature on a letter in the Morning Star which deliberately misrepresented trans people as the perpetrators of violence rather than the true position, which is that they are overwhelmingly the sufferers of violence.

Tory delays give us another opportunity, however, to mobilise the union behind efforts to improve trans rights. Organisations such as Amnesty International and Stonewall have already published condemnations of the Tory retreat on GRA reform, and there have been demonstrations by trans people and their allies across the country.

Members of our union can be encouraged to get involved, but we must also recognise that more must be done if we are to win ground in the battle for trans rights. Trade unions must be mobilised to defend public services, and thereby to defend a vulnerable minority.

Liberation struggle is class struggle: oppose divisive Tory tactics

Right-wing attempts to drive a wedge into the LGBT+ movement have been noted above; the other big tactic employed by the right is to attempt to drive a wedge between trans people and women over the question of access to public services.

A minority of vocal anti-trans activists, who claim to speak for women, have sought to portray trans women as predatory men whose consuming obsession is changing their gender so as to get access to public services such as refuges. In the context of austerity, where organisations such as Rape Crisis and Women’s Aid have faced huge cuts and are unable to meet existing demand from women for support, this lie has found an echo amongst a layer and it needs to be refuted.

To give just one example of the extent of this lie, a Scottish government survey of all 12 regulatory bodies that cover women’s refuges for the whole of the UK found that the existing safeguards in the Equality Act 2010, which allow for certain spaces to exclude trans women, had never needed to be used. The bodies also reported that, although trans women had been accessing their services for years, there had been no incidents involving trans women reported in any refuge throughout the UK. Meanwhile every study available shows the horrendously high rates of assault, domestic violence, sexual assault, rape and murder suffered by trans women.

The trade union movement must fight for all who need access to fully funded public services to support them against domestic abuse and against rape. Housing needs to be available to allow those who are domestically abused to escape their abuser immediately. The law needs to be changed to protect those who suffer from domestic abuse from further victimisation by their employer. The fight for these services, against austerity and against prejudice, is one that should fall squarely on the shoulders of the trade union movement.

Perpetuating myths such as those told by opponents of GRA reform can only serve to divide those who should be united in opposing Tory austerity and cuts to public services. They serve to increase the isolation of trans women and the evidence suggests that during the period of the consultation, in which mainstream press pages have resounded with attacks on trans women, instances of physical attacks on trans people have increased. Nor do these ideas offer a way forward in the fight to defend public services against the austerity onslaught, which falls on working class women disproportionately.

In our own union, there have been examples of senior union reps who deliberately refer to trans people by the wrong gender, or by the wrong name. Combating prejudice and misinformation, and building a powerful, united campaign to improve the lives of trans people is possible, and our union must play a leading role.

It is a mistake to do anything that exacerbates divisions in the working class – along the lines of gender, sexuality, race, etc – as the proponents of identity politics and anti-trans ideas do. The defenders of capitalism already use division to weaken our struggles against exploitation, austerity and oppression. Instead we need to fight for the maximum unity of the working class in struggle around a socialist programme of jobs, homes and services for all.

We call on the leadership of PCS to publish a statement which outlines the steps the union’s leadership is planning to take in line with Annual Delegate Conference policy to support and campaign for reform of the GRA, to demand self-ID for trans people, to demand high quality public services to support all women against domestic abuse and violence, especially in the era of Covid-19 when women have been isolated with their abuser, and to oppose the divisive lies being spread by the media and by the government about trans people.

Self-congratulatory NEC still lack any strategy on Covid-19 or pay

National Executive Committee meetings are often dominated by a series of speeches from the General Secretary, frequently taking 45 minutes, sometimes even an hour, per paper moved.

The NEC of 13.08.20 was no exception. What was surprising was that on the first substantive item of business, it took this long to move a paper on Covid-19 and organising when it did not have a single recommendation to be voted on by the NEC. Instead the time was taken up by the General Secretary earnestly thanking just about everyone he could think of for the amazing work they’ve been doing during the pandemic and then regurgitating the material in the paper section by section.

It fell to the BLN supporters who sit on the NEC to remind the General Secretary and his allies that the pandemic is not over and there is still no sign of a serious strategy from the union to ensure members are not moved back into their offices before it is safe. This view was reinforced when the General Secretary shared his recent correspondence with the Chief Operating Officer of the Civil Service, Alex Chisholm.

Aggressive in tone and short on the kind of detail that would have been useful in putting the union’s case, those in charge of national negotiations are violating a cardinal rule of trade unionism; you don’t sound aggressive until you’re ready to mean it.

Slow push back to the office continues – a fighting strategy is needed

Chisholm’s reply, essentially shrugging off everything Serwotka said, shows the Cabinet Office do not take seriously the current PCS leadership’s opposition to the slow pushing of our members back into workplaces without consideration for the continuing scientific advice that working from home is still safest. An announcement in HMRC last week that 7,000 staff will be asked to move back into offices, joining the 4,000 still there, is just the latest example of this push.

These HMRC staff will join workers from the Passport Office, in HM Courts and Tribunals Service and other parts of the civil service. Members are facing risks to their safety as a result of the failure of the government to ensure they can work from home, but they are also experiencing the failure of the current leadership of the union. The NEC has persistently failed to acknowledge the potential for collective action on health and safety grounds; each time the Civil Service has sought to move people back into offices, the NEC has insisted to union members that it must be their individual call to refuse to go back into an office.

Continuing the litany of mistakes, the management action brief published to the union’s negotiators at group level by the national union seemed to contain contradictory comments, with a focus on ensuring any return to the office was on a voluntary basis. This undermines the view being taken in a number of groups, where the union has held the line that even those who want to go back to the offices should not be allowed to unless it is a greater risk for them to be at home than to travel to and work in an office.

Broad Left forces LU-led DWP Group to call consultative ballot – get involved

BLN supporters have consistently demanded that every effort be made to mobilise collective power when disputes develop over staffing returning to their workplaces. In DWP this pressure from BLN supporters had paid off by the launching of a consultative ballot on the DWP decision to extend opening hours to 8pm and to Saturdays while the pandemic is on-going. BLN supporters welcome this ballot but have concerns at the lacklustre LU campaign to drive out the vote.

We urge all BLN supporters to make contact with their local DWP branches to give support to the ballot. DWP Group has published information that allows reps to join virtual phonebanks, to contact members in the affected Universal Credit Service Centres and Jobcentres in order to encourage them to vote. The ballot continues until 7^th September.

National campaign: pay and pensions report

The other major business discussed at the NEC was on the so-called “National Campaign”. Again, the current leadership swung retreated into endless praise of their own efforts, which have resulted in 40,000 signatures on the PCS pay petition. As a BLN supporter noted, at the current rate of signatures we will get to 100,000 trigger of a debate in parliament some time in 2022. Despite the indignant reaction from Serwotka and Left Unity a few NECs ago, when they said the petition could be an organising tool, there is no sign it is being used as such.

Serwotka’s paper on the national campaign proposed that the NEC agree to “use all available organising and campaigning avenues to increase the signature rate on the national petition”. That was the actual recommendation from these lions of the (ex) left, with no further details offered of what the leadership of the NEC had in mind, or what could be done that we aren’t already doing. The problem isn’t that not enough work is going into the petition, it’s that the petition was always a fig-leaf behind which to hide the absence of a serious campaign in pay in 2020.

Of more interest was the update on the on-going legal battles on pensions; the national union will be sharing information shortly to encourage groups, branches and members to participate in the public consultation on pensions launched by the government. BLN supporters will keep an eye for this, to ensure members’ views about their overpayments of contributions are represented and to demand the government pays up for those people who were subjected to a detriment when they were moved to the Alpha scheme.

NEC agrees BLN motion on the NHS protests

BLN supporters proposed a motion on the recent protests launched by nurses and other health workers over pay. On Saturday 8^th August, around the UK protests were organised by health workers themselves, often bypassing the official trade unions, to demand that the government change their refusal to reopen pay negotiations. NHS workers in England and Wales are subject to the last year of a three year deal, agreed well before the Covid-19 pandemic and which in any case did not correct the last decade worth of pay austerity which has seen rates of pay fall by up to 20%.

As NHS staff in Oban, Scotland put it, “Clapping doesn’t pay our bills.” NHS staff in Scotland and Northern Ireland are on different pay scales to those in England and Wales, with devolved governments having authority over pay. Nurses in Northern Ireland won a historic victory in late 2019 after taking strike action over pay, moving them towards parity with nurses in England and Wales, but still below those in Scotland. None of the nations of the UK have paid their NHS staff sufficiently to offset how much pay has dropped when set against rising prices. PCS has members in NHS Digital, which is covered by NHS pay scales; some of these members joined their nearest demo, in Leeds.

The BLN proposal gave solidarity to the demonstrations and instructed the national union to publish details of further demonstrations, to encourage members to take part, masked and socially distanced of course. This was agreed unanimously by the NEC, finally putting a nail through the NEC’s former policy of not encouraging people to join demonstrations in the current period. Further demonstrations are planned, many on the 12^th September, so if something is happening in your area and you want it publicised, contact an NEC member or the General Secretary’s office to ask for this to be put up on the website.

Sidney Stringer academy is a school in Coventry, the city where OFQUAL is based. This year 60% of teacher predicted grades at Sidney Stringer were marked down by the algorithm implemented by OFQUAL. The head, teachers and students at Sidney Stringer jointly held a protest to call on the government and OFQUAL to address this news. Roughly 150 people attended and heard stories of students whose predicted grades were all marked down, some by two grades. This was a disaster for those students who saw their futures ripped apart by an algorithm. Their anger was just.

BLN supporters and members call for solidarity with the A level students of 2020. We further applaud the united efforts of students, teachers, and similarly outraged members of the public in successfully demanding that teacher predicted grades be reinstated. The power and leverage available to us when united in solidarity against injustice cannot be overstated. The victory of this campaign in forcing a policy U-turn from the Tories – despite their 80 seat majority – shows what can be done when we come together to fight for what is right. This U-turn comes as a direct result of worker (and future worker) led organising and bargaining. It brings to mind the youth-fronted movement on climate action that shines a light directly on the hypocrisy and savagery of the ruling capitalist class.

This fiasco is just the latest in a series of mistakes made by the government in handling the COVID-19 crisis. For months students and teachers have been raising concerns about how grades would be awarded this year, and teachers were instructed to use mock exams and work provided before the lockdown to predict grades. These predicted grades would have meant that record levels of students would pass A levels, especially at A* to C. Politicians took the decision that the pass rates should increase by roughly 1%. OFQUAL were forced to deliver this and did so with an algorithm. Fairness to the students affected was never factored into this political decision.

The algorithm is clearly biased and discriminatory. It makes a mockery of Boris Johnson’s empty promise of levelling up across the country. Yet the algorithm is a symptom of wider unfairness within the education system. State schools have seen their budgets cut to the point that Heads are forced to decide whether to spend money on equipment or wages, a decision no educator should ever be faced with. It means that teachers are managing increasing class sizes and are working untold extra hours, unpaid, to mark homework and produce class plans. In this context it’s no surprise that students from poorer backgrounds have little chance to close the educating gap with those students from rich backgrounds, who are able to attend private schools with adequate funding and to access additional tutors.

Of course, whilst living in a society marked by class-based inequality and top-down elitist control, it is hard to envisage an education system that wouldn’t inherently reflect this. The Tory fetishization of “it all comes down to this” performance in end of year exams disproportionately favours children from wealthy backgrounds, but so too does continuous assessment and coursework. While the latter is certainly closer to fairness and would be a positive step, it is not possible to eradicate the gulf between advantaged and disadvantaged students until we address the vast wealth inequality which is a core tenet of capitalism. BLN supporters and members call for all schools to be free and available to all students, for a fully funded and publicly run education system and for exam boards to be brought into public ownership.

The BLN notes with concern that at the time of writing GCSE results have recently been released and are at a record high, with some schools and headteachers considering appealing against them. In order to avoid repeating the same mistakes as with A-Levels, any and all review of GCSE grades must be conducted in full consultation with trade unions and with the wellbeing of students as the guiding and overarching central principle.

The government has promised a public inquiry into its handling of the COVID-19 crisis in due course. Past and present inquiries, including the ongoing inquiry into Grenfell, suggest this won’t be handled fairly. The PCS NEC and the wider Trade Union movement needs to call for any inquiry to be conducted by the trade union movement to ensure the government is held to account for its decisions. This includes reviewing the ministerial decisions on the way A level and GCSE results have been determined this year, which was of course fully in keeping with the government’s elitist ideology around education.

We stand in solidarity with PCS members working in Ofqual, trying their hardest to deliver yet another flawed government policy in the most of extreme of circumstances and we must not tolerate these workers being used as political pawns in any inquiry. It is government that must be held to account, not the hardworking Civil and Public Servants who deliver on their behalf. We encourage PCS members who feel able to do so to join socially distanced rallies and protests for this results debacle, and to write to their government representatives in support of school students.

DWP PCS members in all the Jobcentres and 21 Universal Credit Service Centres must vote YES in the ballot which starts Monday 17th August. This will give a very clear message to management, to stop their plans to open workplaces until 8pm and Saturdays and bring back conditionality.

The threat to open these workplaces into the evenings and all Saturdays shows no regard for PCS members, who have worked flat out to deliver services to the public in the pandemic and ensure the massive influx of people making claims to benefit have all received payments. We have achieved this with only 60% of our members in the workplace and our members at home have had to put up with delays and issues getting the kit to work from a government department that was the worst prepared with IT equipment for their workforce. All adding extra pressure on our members delivering services.

We have seen the fiasco of rolling out the re-opening of Jobcentres to meet the Tory ministers’ aim of making things look like they are getting back to normal but with scant regard for the health and safety of our members.

There is no reason why we could not continue to provide the bulk of our support remotely over the phone or digitally which would help keep our members and the public safe.

The plans to open jobcentres later and on Saturdays are even more flawed putting everyone further at risk. But also harming the services that can be provided during the peak working times during the week.

During the pandemic there has been flexibility to concentrate the opening hours to the public to normal office hours so that we can focus the limited resources and staffing to when there is the most demand for support. This has helped our members deal with the issues caused by the pandemic and allow them to juggle their personal issues and deal with the limited public transport. This should continue as we are far from out of the woods in dealing with the impact of Coronavirus.

The concept of having the potential to have opening hours until 7.30pm or on Saturdays was to have the flexibility if required to offer services to the public who need support from the DWP but would struggle to access these services during the normal business hours 9-5 .The collective agreement is clear that operating hours should be directly related to demand from the public and not just implemented for the sake of it.

With the economy in recession and large numbers of jobs at risk – the vast bulk of the demand from the public will remain during the day. Any move to stretch our members’ working patterns to cover longer working days and Saturday opening will damage the services to the public when they are most needed.
With such a difficult economic climate the focus should still be on supporting the public and we remain opposed to the return to conditionality. The priorities of paying benefit and supporting the public whilst keeping our members safe must remain.

Management can be made to back off. This will require a huge turnout and YES vote

Branches and reps have the key role in talking to members to encourage them to demonstrate their opposition collectively to management’s plans by voting YES.

Management’s plans are Unsafe – Unnecessary – Unacceptable

On 19^th July, the Government went public with an announcement about 10 emergency courts to be opened across England and Wales, in order to deal with the backlog of 480,000 cases facing Magistrates’ courts due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Emergency courts will be opened in Telford, Stevenage, Swansea, Leeds, Middlesbrough, Chichester, Peterborough, Fleetwood (Lancs) and two in London. This was announced scant days after PCS indicated to members that no details or proposals were available yet, showing the contempt the employer has for the union.

The government has emphasised that the emergency venues – and there may yet be more to come – will only deal with civil, family, tribunal and non-custodial criminal cases, but it is not clear what measures will be in place to protect staff and the public.

Covid-19 and protecting members

Protecting staff and the users of the justice system from violence and aggression of any kind as well as from Covid-19 must be the top priority. In addition to proper security measures, this means social distancing, adequate protective equipment and full risk assessments of buildings by union-appointed Health and Safety reps.

Given that the government wanted these venues to begin hearing cases from this week, it is far from clear that any of this has been done, and, unfortunately the lack of leadership from the union to local union reps and members will likely discourage members from fully pressing the case to keep themselves protected.

There will also be questions from staff about longer travelling time, more expensive journeys, new costs such as car parking in areas which do not have this and other mundane but important aspects of changes like this. At the end of the day, changes made by employers should not come with a cost dumped on to staff.

The silence on the PCS website is deafening. The union’s website is a major public resource that can be accessed by members to find out what is happening, and by non-members to find out why they should join the union, and there’s nothing on there to explain how the union is ensuring the employer looks after staff.

It could be that this complete absence of a campaigning approach is why the employer didn’t feel the need to properly consult the union before announcing the new courts. The

current state of negotiation and consultation remains unclear.

Wider reform agenda continues despite crisis

At the end of June, the government announced an additional £142 million to refurbish courts across England and Wales, which is welcome, but this is happening parallel with a steady retreat from local court services; 77 are still liable to close as the Ministry of Justice follows DWP and HMRC in shutting local offices.

Outrageously, one is in the process of closing even as the government is looking for emergency accommodation for courts elsewhere. Consultation on the closure of Medway County and Family Court was announced on 14^th July, with an early announcement to staff slipped on to the staff intranet on 10^th July without any consultation with the union.

In HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), the employer continues to roll out its pet project, the Reform Programme. Having learned nothing from the disastrous roll out of Digital Mark Up (DMU), the employer is repeating the exercise on the Common Platform. These new procedures will pile a great deal of stress on staff, especially Legal Advisers, at a time when members are already at breaking point. New programmes that will put strain on members must be halted during the crisis and subject to an independent evaluation of their impact. The union must mobilise to demand this.

Pay 2020

Meanwhile staff are still waiting to find out just how badly they are to be let down on pay this year; if the 14p offered to MOJ cleaners is anything to go by, it’ll be pretty bad. Here too, however, there’s little move towards a campaign in the different component parts of the PCS Justice Sector, which includes MOJ proper, HM Prisons and Probation Service, HMCTS, the Crown Prosecution Service and other areas.

In one sense this is understandable; the national union has already publicly announced there will be no pay campaign this year, aside from the pay petition that launched (and launched late, it should be pointed out) on 20^th July.

Broad Left Network supporters are hard at work encouraging members to sign the petition – because several hundred thousand signatures on a petition and the debate in Parliament that this will trigger is better than nothing. But we are under no illusions; this will not deliver a pay rise and it will serve to do precisely zero when it comes to organising and mobilising the union. Yet this is the strategy of the Left Unity/Democrat leadership of the union.

Despite this abdication of leadership, the different employer groups within the union still have a responsibility to fight on pay. The national demand, agreed by Conference, of 10%, must be put to employers and groups should consider balloting for rejection of derisory offers – and especially on any offers tied to changes of terms and conditions, or even consider an indicative ballot for action on pay to mobilise members and provide a concrete test of the mood on pay.

The union’s National Executive Committee met on Wednesday 8^th July. The NEC was scheduled for only 3.5 hours. Such scheduling reflects the desire by the Left Unity majority on the NEC to limit debate on their utterly inadequate approach to important questions facing members, such as on pay and Covid-19 but now also on the future of PCS itself.

As a result of this limit on time the question posed by the General Secretary at the meeting two weeks before, of merger or restructuring, including potential redundancies for PCS staff, has not been properly addressed yet. Also not taken was a motion addressing the union’s response to the Tory decision not to pursue serious reform of the Gender Recognition Act, and on the question of support for Black Lives Matters demonstrations.

Wasting time

Of the things actually discussed at the NEC, an hour and a half was spent on a paper which had only one action for agreement. This was to amend the timetable of work around the PCS pay petition. Every second speaker from the NEC majority, based in ex-left faction Left Unity, found time to repeatedly urge their fellow LU colleagues to make a five-minute contribution to the debate covering exactly the same ground as other speakers.

Elections cancelled

One of the far-reaching decisions taken at this NEC was to cancel the elections for 2020. 

Elections were first suspended back in March by General Secretary Mark Serwotka and the NEC majority of Left Unity and the PCS Democrats. It is telling that when the question was first raised, the term “cancelled” was exactly what the LU majority had in mind. But under pressure from BLN members they were only suspended.

Officially, the decision in March to suspend elections was on the grounds of the Covid-19 crisis. Though the General Secretary explicitly indicated that both he and the company employed by the union to independently run the elections agreed that they were “technically deliverable”.  Broad Left Network supporters opposed suspending the elections on the basis that difficulties could be sufficiently mitigated to run elections, to ensure that democracy prevails in PCS.

Since then other trade unions who suspended their elections, including Unite, one the largest in the UK, have reinstated their elections. Broad Left Network supporters argued that PCS should follow suit. At this NEC the LU majority rejected a BLN proposal to restart the PCS elections even though conceding there is no obstacle to doing so.

Why we have elections

Arguing in favour of elections is not simply demanding elections for the sake of elections. It is about ensuring that members are given a choice over who they want to lead their union. The actions of the current leadership are so far outside the union’s policies as set by Annual Delegate Conference, and are so detrimental to members, especially on questions of pay, that members need to be offered that choice of leadership at national and group level.

The decision by the LU majority on the NEC to abandon the 10% demand agreed by PCS Annual Delegate Conference in 2019, in favour of an “interim” pay demand for an “above inflation” pay rise, has completely demolished the union’s national pay campaign. The government’s offer of 1.5-2.5%, on which the top rate of 2.5% is being imposed on different government departments even at the time of writing, all but meets their “interim” pay demand given the low level of inflation.

Such utter ineptitude when it comes to negotiations with the Tory government, of demanding a ridiculously low pay award, was compounded by the union’s public announcement that it could not run a ballot during the Covid-19 crisis. The government were therefore faced by negotiators who had already announced that they couldn’t organise industrial action demanding a pay award that completely sold out the demands of union members to fix a decade of pay austerity.

No wonder Lord Agnew and the other negotiators for the Tory government refused to take the union seriously.

Without a change of leadership the union’s pay campaign will continue to be mired in the mud. No serious action has been taken since April 2019 and none seems likely this year – despite a pledge for a ballot given by LU to Conference 2019. Elections are required to put these questions before the membership for decision now not deferred until May 2021.

Left Unity’s contemptuous attitude

Scandalously, the justification Left Unity repeatedly put forward, and have now published on their website, is that there is no membership demand for elections.

The leaders of Left Unity have short memories. This was exactly the same argument put forward by the right-wing leadership of PCS under Marion Chambers and Barry Reamsbottom, when PCS was first created in the late 1990s. In opposition to annual elections, biennial elections were initially enshrined into the joint union’s constitution in 1998.

The LU majority doubled-down on this ludicrous defence by adding that they don’t think reps should be taking time off from their rep duties in order to tell members how great they are and why members should elect them. If nothing else the whole debate was instructive as to the utter contempt in which senior Left Unity figures hold union members, union democracy and the important role elections play. 

Frankly, forcing leading members of the union to walk desk to desk engaging with members is a dose of reality that the NEC majority could do with.

To re-build a fighting, democratic leadership of PCS, and winning support for socialist policies – such as a pay campaign that isn’t centred around a petition and a union organising strategy that isn’t based around unaccountable decisions taken in London – are worthy tasks and elections are central to them.

No rescheduled Conference

BLN members also put forward comprehensive proposals as the basis on which an Annual Delegate Conference should be considered. This involved looking at options like a virtual or hybrid virtual/socially-distanced conference as well as the potential for a scaled-down conference organised in the same way that Special Delegate Conferences are organised, i.e. one delegate per branch.

The LU majority voted this down on the basis that they didn’t think having a Conference should be the NEC’s default position. Speaker after speaker called into question the need for a Conference and made the case for an “event”, i.e. a gathering of some kind that would not be able to make decisions binding on the leadership of the union.

TUC Motions

In the remaining 25 minutes available to the NEC, discussion turned to motions being proposed by the NEC to the Trade Union Congress, which is holding a scaled back Congress in the autumn this year.

Broad Left Network supporters proposed amendments here as well. On the motion on pay, yet again the leadership of the union put forward the demand for an “above inflation pay rise”. This rather makes a mockery of the oft-repeated view of President, Deputy President and other senior LU figures that the demand for an “above inflation pay rise” was only an “interim” demand. There was no question that the motion proposed by the NEC was calling for a coordinated campaign around an “above inflation pay rise”. 

Such utter weakness, when even Unison is demanding 10% for local government workers, when Tesco has actually coughed up a 10% pay rise and when petition after petition is calling for nurses to get a 10% pay rise squanders the opportunity to build on the huge support that exists for a substantial, austerity-cancelling pay rise for key workers. All of us have faced the same attacks over the last ten years; all of us can fight to reverse these attacks. 

Our specific proposal to unite unions behind the demand for a 10% was voted down, but it did force the General Secretary to agree to add “significantly” to the motion before it was submitted to the TUC, so that the demand was for a “significantly above inflation pay rise”.

The other motion being considered was on the post-Covid-19 recovery plan. On this Broad Left Network supporters on the NEC proposed an additional line that called for the taking of companies threatening redundancies or office closures into public ownership. Amusingly none of the NEC speakers who opposed the proposal could think of a serious reason to oppose it; “I’m just not minded to support it” was one penetrating contribution.

The result of this is that an opportunity to call for concrete measures which could help out British Airways workers and the many tens of thousands of others facing unemployment was lost.

Broad Left Network supporters don’t overstate the importance of this. The TUC is not going to suddenly transform into a bastion of support for workers in struggle against vicious employers and a vindictive, anti-union government based on a few motions. Every socialist, however, and LU still at least claim to be socialists, should be taking the opportunity to put pressure on the tops of the trade union movement, for them to do what they are well paid to do: to mobilise and fight for gains for the working class.

We urge all reps and members of PCS to join the Broad Left Network; it is clear in meeting after meeting that the leadership of the union do not have a plan and lack the political understanding necessary to see how our union’s fight on pay, Covid-19 and a stack of other issues must be organised. It is time for socialist change in PCS.

Today, 8^th July, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced that £2bn will be set aside to fund jobs for six months, paid at the level of the national minimum wage, for people aged 16 to 24 who are in receipt of Universal Credit and “at risk” of long-term unemployment.

Staff in Jobcentres up and down the UK remember the programmes introduced when the Coalition government came to power in 2010, and the further programmes unveiled after the 2012 welfare reforms, which increased the number of punitive benefit sanctions and extended their duration.

Programmes such as sector-based work academies and the mandatory work activity were not paid, except that people received their benefits, so it amounted to free labour for some employers with little guaranteed benefit for those who participated.

Today’s announcement is in a different direction and reflects memories, amongst the Tory elite, of the seemingly endless headlines about their ruthless handling of vulnerable and desperate people claiming benefits.

As well as community campaigns to bring shame on employers who benefitted from the free schemes, in order to force them to withdraw, trade unions such as the PCS played a role by raising questions in parliament and presenting evidence that these schemes didn’t work and that staff in Jobcentres were being given quotas to fill, with sanctions for claimants who refused.

Insofar as that is the case, today’s announcement represents a small victory for those trade unions, community campaigns and socialists who fought bitterly against sanctions and “workfare”, i.e. welfare that was tied to working for someone else for free.

However this should not obscure what is really happening. The announcement is a subsidy to the bosses. Employers will be seeking to maximise the amount of labour they receive (and therefore profits they can make) whilst minimising costs. We should also not ignore the fact that the national minimum wage is not sufficient to live on.

Included within the announcement of the £2bn is also an indication that employers who participate in the scheme and agree to create a minimum wage job funded by the state will also be able to top up the wages of the workers who get jobs out of it. So the opportunity is there for unions to organise these new workers through a targeted, high profile campaign.

Such a campaign must unite workers brought in for six months on the minimum wage with those workers around them. If previous programmes can be used as a yardstick, it is likely that the new jobs will be created in workplaces where workers are already clustered around the national minimum wage. There is a clear chance to fight to raise all wages.

Stop redundancies and closures: nationalise to stop job losses

Campaigns as described above will almost certainly be multi-union campaigns. In truth they should involve the Trades Union Congress (TUC) as well, as a way to coordinate between different unions. Rishi Sunak’s announcements today highlight a difficulty here.

Alongside the national minimum wage jobs announced, Sunak also announced 30,000 traineeships. Socialists in PCS remember the creation of traineeships in 2014 and the joint statement between the TUC and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) which welcomed them.

In order to unite in such an opportunist manner with the representatives of the bosses, the TUC had to ignore its own conference policy and the long-standing opposition of young trade unionists to unpaid work, which is what traineeships amounted to.

Only through the utter weakness of the trade union leaderships have traineeships survived since 2014. They are now being tripled in number.

Workers are now being faced with mass redundancies. The announcements in airline after airline, including more than 10,000 job losses in British Airways, show that the bosses will act ruthlessly to protect their profits. Many of the areas facing redundancies are highly unionised and have fought protracted industrial campaigns to defend pay and conditions.

These redundancies will not be halted by Sunak’s announcements and they certainly won’t be halted by a supine TUC left to its own devices. Socialists who hold leading positions in the trade union movement must work together to put maximum pressure on the TUC to organise and coordinate campaigns that could defeat such redundancies.

One of the key demands has to be for the taking of companies threatening redundancies, or threatening closures likely to devastate communities, into public ownership. Broad Left Network supporters are pushing for the PCS leadership to adopt this position, and to take it to the TUC Congress, in whatever socially-distanced or online form that this will meet.

Potential for a serious campaign in Universal Credit: socialist leadership needed

Alongside campaigns of solidarity to those areas facing massive redundancies, and continuing campaigns against Tory abuses of the unemployed – which means revisiting the arguments against sanctions with our brothers and sisters in DWP, we cannot be blind to the huge potential for recruitment to and organising of the union in the civil service.

Sunak has recently announced an additional 13,000 new work coaches in Jobcentres. Welcome though this is, it is not being announced out of the kindness of the Chancellor’s heart. The government are applying a plaster to the gaping sore that is Universal Credit because of the tsunami of redundancies they fear from August onwards.

From August, employers will have to make a contribution towards the 80% of wages being paid to furloughed workers by the government. This is likely to provoke layoffs, as the bosses yet again seek to preserve their profits.

Additional work coaches will increase the support available to claimants. In ordinary times this would have been face to face support, but we continue to fight for workers and claimants to be protected from the Covid-19 pandemic by allowing for interaction to be online or by telephone, and only face to face where there is no alternative.

Workers across Universal Credit, both in the Jobcentres and the Service Centres, where the benefit is processed and put into payment, have been under huge pressure for years. This pressure led to a brief industrial campaign for 5,000 additional staff in the Service Centres alone, which saw strike action in Walsall, Wolverhampton and Stockport.

With no support from the leadership of PCS, the campaign ultimately withered; members in those sites gained concessions but judged that they could not win the overall demands around staffing, workloads and union rights without other Service Centres being organised to take action too. The union’s leadership, outside of the minority who support the Broad Left Network, did not put any work into developing that broader campaign.

Increase still further the number of claimants to Universal Credit, however, reinstitute the “claimant commitment”, increase the number of interactions required between claimants and DWP and even restore the sanctions regimes – as DWP is trying to do – and the pressure on UC staff will increase dramatically.

Moreover, during the height of the Covid-19 crisis, DWP moved thousands of workers from other areas such as Debt Management, Dispute Resolution and NINo sections to support Universal Credit and New Style JSA. That is not a long-term solution. Eventually the work done by those sections will need picking up. This too will increase pressure.

DWP have already shown they are quite prepared to resort en masse to agency jobs – that is, people brought in via agencies like Brook Street, who profit per person they send. They have announced an initial tranche of several thousand permanent work coach jobs, but they are also likely to try handling additional work via fixed term jobs. Almost inevitably, due to the intricacies of training and consolidating staff on UC, this will not stop pressure reaching boiling point at Jobcentres and Service Centres.

The leadership of the union must be ready for that. The old, lazy attitude that if any site approaches the leadership with a request for a strike ballot they will support it must be cast aside. The DWP Group Executive Committee, led by ex-left organisation PCS Left Unity, must either prepare a campaign to unite old and new staff behind demands for permanency, workload protections, sufficient staffing, limits to telephony and improved trade union rights or they should stand aside for those who will.