Author: pcsbln

At a meeting of the PCS union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) on 25^th June, General Secretary Mark Serwotka moved a paper that suggested the union had two choices in order to survive: restructuring by reducing the costs of staffing or else merger.

This announcement comes barely six months after the union’s financial report for 2020 declared, “We have stabilised union finances and this will provide a foundation to grow again and achieve wins for our members.”

Although Serwotka’s proposals explicitly deny a crisis, and his meeting with the union’s staff on 26^th June began with a repeated declaration that there was no crisis, it is hard to see what else the situation can be called when he is openly touting future cuts to budgets, annual deficits of £2.5 million and potential redundancies of staff.

While other unions are growing, especially those which have been clear about protecting the safety of their members during the coronavirus crisis, the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union has lost 4,000 members between January 2018 and the present.

For members of the PCS Broad Left Network, this is not coincidental. Where determined campaigns have won on issues of real importance to members, membership has risen. The link between the campaigning, bargaining and how we recruit union members is key.

Weak on Pay

The PCS response on key issues like pay, redundancy rights, pensions and office closures has been to offer angry words but little else. This is the inescapable view that faces civil servants and workers in related fields organised by the union.

Unhelpfully the current leadership of PCS, organised around “Socialist View” a faction inside “Left Unity”, has been at pains to prove that perception correct. When the coronavirus crisis broke, they wrote to civil service bosses meekly asking for an “above inflation” pay rise.

PCS President Fran Heathcote and her faction, Socialist View, have been the loudest proclaiming that this was merely an “interim” demand, in the hope that the Cabinet Office would agree it immediately, with talks on the rest to be postponed until after the coronavirus crisis.

No one with an ounce of experience in fighting the Tory government’s austerity of the last ten years would for a moment have believed that such a strategy would work. It was even less likely to work when the union openly proclaimed it was unable to hold a ballot during the coronavirus crisis.

The leaders of the union sat down with the bosses with no leverage whatsoever.

As pay offers begin to filter out across the different government departments, the result of such a cack-handed approach is an increase of 2.5% and nothing to address the 20% slashed from pay over the last decade.

Weak on Covid-19

Exactly the same weak approach is what has damned the union’s response on the Coronavirus.

Negotiators for the bosses mouthed platitudes about keeping people safe but refused any kind of binding agreement with the union.

Instead of organising mass pressure to force the employer to concede, the union’s leaders pointedly hid behind the anti-union laws in order to avoid giving advice to members and reps that could trigger walkouts in defence of staff safety.

Walkouts have been sporadically happening, as members reject the approach of their employers, which is often arbitrary, secretive and far from enough to allay very real concerns, especially from those staff who have vulnerable people at home.

Yet when employers make far reaching decisions to reopen or extend the opening of offices, as in Ministry of Justice, the union has simply put the decision on to members to decide individually if they are facing an imminent risk.

The union will now be further put to the test over the plan to increase the numbers of people attending face to face appointments in Jobcentres.

Poor on building the union

Meanwhile the union’s leadership are trumpeting their newest campaign idea; getting 100,000 people to sign a petition demanding a pay rise for civil servants. Even they admit this won’t deliver a pay rise, but they hope it will contribute to union “organising” efforts.

Organising is increasingly viewed by this group as a numbers-only game, where certain activities – especially centrally-run and professionally staffed, rather than based on the needs and views of reps and branches – will increase membership participation.

Yet participation is not viewed through the lens of political consciousness and confidence. Like the worst kind of civil service boss, the current leaders of the union have reduced everything to numbers.

Did the member vote in the ballot, did they open an email, did they look at the latest Zoom call? If yes, tick box; if no, must try harder. The current leadership are so intent upon this approach that they’re prepared to talk of union mergers or offering redundancies before they would consider changing course.

Undemocratic

Against this backdrop, worries over the procedures being followed at the NEC may seem insignificant but the total truncation of NEC business by the current leadership has reduced the NEC to a rubber stamp of the officers’ decisions.

Despite a decision by the NEC that it should meet every two weeks during the coronavirus emergency, President Fran Heathcote did not call a meeting for three weeks and then scheduled a 3.5 hour meeting, thereby dodging important business raised by NEC members.

Business not taken included a proposal that after weeks of prevarication the NEC should give full support to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations (amending the proposal from the union’s senior officers that the union should explicitly not support these demonstrations).

It also included an important motion following revelations in the Sunday Times that the government was dropping plans to reform the Gender Recognition Act to ease the many barriers facing transgender men and women trying to change their birth certificate.

The current leadership of PCS has been far behind its own members on the question of Trans rights, leading to a motion of censure passed by Annual Delegate Conference in 2019.

Such bureaucratic shenanigans are not new. At the last NEC meeting the National President refused to allow a motion on the union’s campaign strategy to be moved because it disagreed with the proposals put forward by the General Secretary!

Supporters of the Broad Left Network who sit on the NEC will continue to challenge these poor practices and to maximise discussion and debate on the key questions facing the members and reps of the union.

Organise the PCS Broad Left Network

At Annual Delegate Conference in 2019, a new organisation was launched by socialists, some in political parties but most who are independent of any party.

The purpose of this organisation was to rebuild the socialist campaigning ethos that once held sway in PCS: elected lay reps fighting for the implementation of socialist policies by their employer and in society, active at all levels of the union and accountable to members.

Far from mobilising the union, the approach of the current leadership has done nothing but bring to a grinding halt the very campaigns that could help us recruit tens of thousands of civil servants and privatised workers into the ranks of the union. That has to change.

We encourage all union members and reps to join the Broad Left Network. We are organising in every single employer group of the union. This includes all civil service departments, non-civil service public sector areas and in the private sector too.

The Government is pushing ahead to reopen Jobcentres to the public at a reckless pace. This drive is to get back to business as usual as quickly as possible and put our members including the security guards and cleaners as well as the public at risk by doing so.

Ministers are clearly linking the public access to the jobcentres with the return to conditionality in the DWP that had been suspended from March because of the crisis and to focus all efforts on paying benefit to the millions of new claimants. 

We now have the spectacle of installation teams rushing around to all the jobcentre sites poorly putting in low screens before even beginning the risk assessment process. It is this process that should properly examine the control measures that would need to be put in place and what would be necessary and crucially whether it is even safe to open jobcentres to the public again.

 No regard is being paid to what should be the paramount concern which is the health, safety and wellbeing of all those who work in the jobcentres and the public who need to use DWP services. The re-imposing of the lockdown in Leicester shows that the pandemic is far from over. It is ironic that a jobcentre in Leicester was being targeted as one of the first to re-open!

A fighting lead by the GEC should include demanding that contracted out staff, such as security and cleaners who are being put in the front line of danger, are brought in-house.  Such a stance would attract a whole new layer of members in to PCS from all DWP staff areas.

Management’s haste to install screens is ironic given the bitter screens dispute a number of years ago when management were removing our screens to create the DWP.

The government want to get back to the normal DWP regime for claimants rather than just focussing on getting payments out to the public and support to try and find work. 

It is clear that a lead needs to be given from the Group leadership at national level.  We need to go back hard to senior management in the DWP to demand that the Jobcentre doors remain shut. The safety of our members and the public needs to be paramount. It is completely unnecessary to bring claimants back into jobcentres to deliver support to them.

We need to build and organise collective resistance at workplace level to back up these demands. We should take every opportunity to organise members’ meetings safely.  Every site should have an agreed muster point in the site risk assessment that is large enough for all staff to assemble safely using 2m social distancing so could be an ideal place close to the office to safely organise members meetings.

It is legitimate to request time to discuss health and safety plans with our members . Meetings can be held in the sites where there is room to do this safely in the workplace or do it by skype where there is not the room to physically gather everyone together.  The key thing is to have a collective discussion with our members to agree opposition to management plans in a united way across the membership in our jobcentre sites.

We have produced a motion for branches, regions and sites to use channel the anger in a systematic way to demonstrate the willingness to fight and put pressure on the DWP to halt their plans. At the same time we need to push the DWP GEC leadership to take a lead on this issue in resisting these changes collectively and giving full support to jobcentre members.

Not only can we campaign collectively to demonstrate the anger at these plans we also need to make it clear to management nationally that it is unacceptable for them to push to put our members into serious and imminent danger by planning to reopen jobcentres to the public.

We have legal protection under health and safety legislation, including using Section 44, to immediately stop work and proceed to a place of safety in the event of being exposed to serious and imminent and unavoidable danger. The risk can be removed simply by shutting the doors to protect everyone working in the jobcentre. But as we know, our best weapon is acting collectively and using our industrial power. We can use Section 44 to build our members’ confidence to act, showing them that it is management who are acting unsafely. 

The department should not be driving to penalise the public for not wanting to put themselves at risk by travelling to a jobcentre when they can access full support from experienced jobcentre staff over the phone to help them find work. We are in a recession so the emphasis of DWP work needs to be to fully pay benefits and help support claimants in this challenging economic climate.

It is unacceptable that ministers and senior management are looking at how pressure is brought back to bear on claimants to prove what efforts they are making to find work when we are in a recession and pandemic, 

There needs to be full recognition of how difficult it is for anyone to find work at the moment and the battle many workers across numerous sectors are having to remain in work and fighting the offensive from the bosses to make them pay for the coronavirus crisis.  

All the support that we need to give the public we could give over the phone and digitally and it is unnecessary to see anyone face to face apart from the most urgent cases who have no other means to get support, who we are already seeing.

We have an opportunity as a union to build further links with claimant organisations and unite the opposition to the Tory Government’s plans across claimants, communities and our members working in jobcentres. This is something we can also organise campaigning with the wider PCS membership and wider trade union movement.

There is a real opportunity here to mobilise members and show that it is the BLN supporters who have the ideas and strategy to work with branches to take on the DWP.

Justice for George Floyd – build a mass movement of workers and youth against racism and against capitalism in the UK.

Across the UK, the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, unarmed, pleading that he could not breathe, has become a lightning rod for anger against racism. Thousands have joined demonstrations and rallies have heard impassioned speeches demanding an end to stop-and-search policing, demanding answers as to why BAME people are disproportionately dying from Covid-19 and demanding an end to racism, injustice, discrimination and poverty, all of them very real pandemics with very real deaths.

Young people in particular have led and organised demonstrations, forced to do so because of the absence of layers of the trade union movement and opposition from police, politicians and other elements of the establishment. For the trade union movement, the situation has posed a dilemma. In many sectors of the economy, unions have been fighting to protect workers from the Coronavirus by keeping them at home, where this is possible. They fear any premature move back into workplaces could spark a Covid-19 resurgence. For this reason many serious activists and trade unionists have stayed away from BLM events.

Such fears must be addressed sympathetically. Many workers are afraid of the virus and have been under huge stress from bosses who simply don’t care that they are trying to shield vulnerable relatives, while public health guidance has been written to support the maximum number of people being at work. Attempts are already being made to divide workers between those who supported the Black Lives Matters demonstrations and those who were instinctively worried about such events during lockdown.

This genuine fear on the part of workers is fundamentally different to the attitude we have seen from the right-wing leaders of the labour movement, however. Labour leader Keir Starmer’s rush to attack members of his own party for joining demonstrations, and his condemnation of the people in Bristol who pulled down the statue of a slave trader, is an attempt to signal to the capitalist class that Labour is safe again. Despite worthy words from trade union leaders, none of them have encouraged members to join the demonstrations.

Yet if these demonstrations are to stand a chance at forcing lasting change, the trade unions cannot stand aloof. They must be present at the demonstrations, to put forward the very socialist ideas that can deliver a world free of oppression, discrimination and racism. Trade unions are mass organisations that unite workers of all backgrounds. Only a united working class can force the capitalist class and their government to concede an end to stop and search policing, an end to racist immigration laws or a minimum wage of £12 per hour to end poverty which disproportionately hits BAME communities.

Additionally, many of the thousands involved in the demonstrations are those who would most benefit from being members of fighting, democratic trade unions campaigning for the adoption of socialist policies across society: young people. Equally many of these young workers are those who are most likely to suffer from the economic crisis that is coming. It is for this reason that supporters of the Broad Left Network put forward a motion to the PCS National Executive Committee urging support for the demonstrations.

We note with regret that the NEC did not pass this motion. After opposition was expressed by multiple members of the NEC to the idea of encouraging members to join the demonstrations, we agreed to remit the motion on condition that the Senior Officers of the NEC consider what advice could be issued to members that would support the demonstrations. Still nothing has been heard, and so we have written to General Secretary Mark Serwotka requesting an update from the union’s Senior Officers.

Broad Left Network supporters on the NEC urge all branches to consider how best to support and participate in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, including by engaging with the organisers to discuss stewarding and social distancing arrangements. Many of the demonstrations are the most safety conscious ever seen, with hand-sanitiser, face masks and even areas for those who are shielding others to be given extra space, and these measures will only be improved by leadership from our experienced cadre of union reps.

The coronavirus crisis continues as does the pressure on our members and the claimants who rely on  us. Maintaining the service and the safety of staff are the major concerns of the union which have dominated meetings of the DWP Group Executive Committee (GEC).

Serious Incident Protocol Needed 

The most recent GEC meeting was 21/22 April. At this meeting Broad Left Network (BLN) supporters put forward proposals for a serious incident protocol (similar to that put forward in HMRC). This would lay down clear standards to protect staff and trigger an office/site closure if safeguards are not met. Such a proposal would form the crucial part of a comprehensive agreement which we believe should also include:-

* A clear plan that enables every single DWP worker to work from home unless it is agreed by the TUS as impossible or in cases of domestic violence.

* Full union consultation on all the planning being done to deliver services to the public.

*  Agreement that where a member of staff who stays at home cannot work, for example, due to childcare needs, are placed on paid special leave.

* A definition of “key worker”, with the object of the union being to minimise the number of members counted as key workers. 

* An agreed list of critical tasks which require staff to attend an office.

* An agreed list of offices which should remain open to deliver crucial services to the vulnerable.

* Continue to oppose the recruitment of agency staff and demand that management directly recruits permanent staff 

In absence of this protocol or until it is established, we argued that branches must be supported with the task of conducting updated risk assessments across every building to ensure capacity limits are updated to take account of the need for social distancing. This is particularly important in the context of DWP having the ability to redirect staff from office to office at will. Such redirection must be the subject of consultation at all levels and must be agreed before it happens. 

It’s a major criticism that 8 weeks into the virus crisis that many concerns remain unresolved and with no agreement in sight. Despite this fact our proposals were rejected by the Socialist View GEC majority saying they were doing most of these things – which we believe is not the case. Or they said could place individual members at risk of management reprisals – which we reject as we have always been clear that collective action is our best protection.

More Staff Needed 

We argued that even with all of the measures above there is an urgent need for further permanent recruitment and that a staffing demand of 20,000 permanent staff be immediately reiterated to DWP senior management.

Stop Office Closures 

We welcomed the temporary step back from office closures taken by DWP, but believe the office closure programme should be fully cancelled.

No To Outsourcing 

 The bringing of outsourced contracts back in house must be a priority along with supporting branches to recruit to the union staff from Interserve, G4S and other privatised services delivered in DWP buildings.

Special Leave Claim

BLN supporters raised the demand that staff working at home or in the workplace should receive some recognition for all their hard work and proposed a claim for 2 weeks  paid special leave.

A 10% Pay Increase For Public Sector Workers

BLN supporters raised this demand in as part of the approach to rewarding staff.  In the discussion SV supporters rejected this.

GEC Elections

BLN supporters believe democracy is important and that elections should be carried out to ensure a fresh mandate for the GEC.  SV majority say this is an NEC decision and it has been decided that the elections are postponed for safety reasons despite the use of electronic voting being available for the GEC elections.  

Using Technology and Email Addresses to Engage with Members

We raised the request for zoom accounts to be made available for all Branches that wished to use them. We were told we cannot afford these to be made available despite savings being made on travel and subsistence.  A cost of a zoom account starts from £11.99 per month. We also raised the request for branch officers to gain access to members personal email addresses and make the necessary changes with the Data Protection Officer to ensure GDPR compliance for PCS.  This was rejected.

Concluding Remarks

Broad Left Network supporters put forward proposals at the GEC on all the major issues of concern to DWP members. We had some success in moving the GEC but mostly faced outright opposition or ‘it’s in hand’ excuses. The GEC can and should do better in challenging management and using our collective strength in securing agreements which will give guarantees of safe working for members working at home or in the workplace.

Covid 19 poses a serious risk to all workers. This is especially true for those at work during the crisis, which is why we demand the highest Health and Safety workplace standards. 

The question facing us is how do we respond, if and when, despite local union reps best efforts, the employer has not done enough to ensure that our working environment is safe.

A clue to this is provided by PCS reps and members at Paisley Jobcentre on Friday 24th April. They had an outdoors union meeting (with proper social distancing arrangements in place) following an outbreak of Covid-19 in their office. 

More than twenty staff, whose numbers had already been drastically reduced by the need to keep home and safe colleagues with underlying health conditions, voted that their office was not safe to work in. After the vote members stayed out of the building for several hours while they waited for the union’s negotiators to get a deal out of senior managers.

National managers, however, were unwilling to budge. They insisted, despite the concerns raised by staff at the site and by Health and Safety reps, that a thorough clean had been conducted and that staff should return to work.

A compromise was eventually reached that allowed staff to go home on full flexi credits with the office closed for 72 hours. Local union reps were applauded for their work.

Union reps at Paisley acted decisively to protect themselves and their members. They correctly determined that the health and safety of members was paramount and collectively refused to work in a workplace they deemed unsafe.

Had the Paisley reps and members relied on advice and a lead from the union nationally they would have been disappointed and still waiting.

A PCS Briefing “Coronavirus – can employees refuse to attend the work place” has been recently issued. At the end of a lengthy cataloguing of bits of legislation on health and safety the Briefing concludes with a statement bereft of guidance and leadership -. “This briefing provides general information about statutory rights which are available to all employees in the UK. We are NOT advising you to do, or refrain from doing, anything.” 

Current health and safety legislation provide only limited protection. The anti-union laws are another obstacle.However the health and safety of union members must always come first.

The incident at Paisley highlighted the need for the DWP Group Executive to secure arrangements which give better protection to members. Something BLN members on the GEC have been arguing for.

Other areas have successfully achieved this. For example a “Serious Incident Protocol” has been negotiated by the PCS Group Executive in HMRC. It can be found here. It’s not perfect. The Government advise self-isolation if a member of your household has (or is suspected to have) Covid 19. Unfortunately, the employer refuse to apply the same standards to contact with a person at work. However, it has forced the closure of several HMRC buildings for periods of up to a week. The DWP GEC should negotiate a similar or better agreement for our members, and the NEC should try to get a similar or improved agreement to cover all our workplaces.

The NEC also needs to act more decisively to ensure staff (our members) and reps are in a safe place whether at home or in the workplace.

BLN members were active in the Paisley Jobcentre demand for a safe workplace and in the action supporting this demand. We have no hesitation in recommending reps follow their example.

PCS should demand of management that they make all the workplace adjustments needed to ensure workers safety. These include:

• Everyone should work from home unless their work is both critical and can’t be done at home.

• All staff with underlying health conditions, live with someone with underlying health conditions or have caring responsibilities must work from home or be placed on paid special leave

• Where office attendance is necessary, agreed social distancing of at least 2m in all areas of the office – no compromise on capacity.

• Thoroughly cleaned premises and equipment

• Hand sanitisers available at every point where they are needed

Where demands are not met to the satisfaction of reps and members a car park meeting should be held (with proper social distancing arrangements in place) to agree collectively how to respond. Stick together until a solution is agreed and accepted by members. Yes, unity is our strength in these difficult times. A lesson it seems the national leadership of the union has yet to learn. Our members’ safety is not for sale.

Preparing our union to withstand the attacks of the new Tory Government is urgent. PCS, alongside unions like the RMT, which are left fighting unions, will be key to ensuring the whole of the trade union movement is able to respond to the attacks which are coming. 

Johnson, in his victory speech, talked about being a ‘one-nation Conservative’ and promised increased spending on the NHS. This is difficult to believe. Many of us remember Thatcher quoting Frances of Assisi, promising to bring harmony and hope to Britain when she won in 1979.

Instead, she ruled ruthlessly in the interests of her class and attacked working people including Civil Service workers and their families. It was Thatcher who privatised huge areas of the Civil Service, broke up national bargaining by introducing ‘delegations’ and cut thousands of jobs in her attempts to reduce the power of the union.

Johnson will do the same. Already he has launched an assault on the rights of rail workers to strike. This, combined with the recent brutal anti-democratic court rulings against the postal workers’ union, the CWU, gives a glimpse of the attacks that are to come.

But if the Trade Union movement fights with a strategy that unites workers across trade unions then Johnson’s attacks can be defeated. The seeming strength of Johnson’s government can be shattered. In 1987 Margaret Thatcher had a majority of 102. Within 12 months the campaign of mass non-payment against the poll tax began and led to her resignation just a few years later.

Today’s Tory party is far weaker than it was then. It is bitterly divided, and Johnson has only been able to win by linking BREXIT with promises to invest in health, housing and education and falsely claiming he is standing up for ‘the people’.

His promise to “get BREXIT done” by 31January is impossible to achieve and the road is fraught with dangers for big business and the Tories. It is entirely possible that this will cause huge political problems for the Government. If the Brexit arrangements trash the economy, all the other promises on taxes and spending will become impossible to deliver. The worst estimates say that a No Deal exit could cause twice the damage of the banking crash.

These false promises will become apparent very quickly and provoke a response which the Tories didn’t anticipate. The relevance of the anti-austerity agenda promoted by Corbyn will be back in the minds of working people.

The Trade Union movement must prepare now. PCS should demand the TUC call an urgent ‘council of war’ to plan the fight back against Johnson’s attacks. In the here and now this means immediate support for the PCS, education, postal and rail workers currently in dispute.  But that also means giving the lead to quickly co-ordinate a campaign against the Tories to give a voice to working people. This must include demands for socialist policies. If the TUC doesn’t act then PCS must meet with like-minded unions to organise an effective and quick response.

Already politicians, commentators and the Labour right wing, are arguing that Labour’s poor result was caused by Corbyn’s left-wing manifesto. This is nonsense. If Corbyn had maintained the commitment that he gave in the 2017 manifesto that a Labour government led by him would recognise the referendum result, seek to negotiate a deal in the interests of workers the outcome might have been very different.  Supporters of the Broad Left Network moved an emergency motion at the September NEC that called for the TUC Congress, which was meeting the following week, to mobilise workers to fight for a general election, just as Johnson was losing crucial parliamentary votes. However, this was opposed and defeated by Mark Serwotka and his supporters, meaning that the mistaken approach of Jeremy Corbyn to instead limit himself to parliamentary manoeuvres with pro-Remain parties wasn’t countered.  

Even so, Labour got 10.2 million votes, the second time under Corbyn it has reached over 10 million votes, something that was not achieved by Blair after the 2001 election, or ever by Brown or Miliband. Had he won, and implemented his programme it would have changed the lives of millions of working people including PCS members.

The battle lines are now being drawn with Johnson, aided and abetted by his side-kick, the unelected, unaccountable Cummings, planning their overhaul of Whitehall which will impact all PCS members and the communities we serve. Let’s not forget it was Cummings who lectured that a permanent civil service belongs in the history books!

The agenda for PCS members is already set. Fair pay, a return to national bargaining, investment in the key services we provide and an end to office closures, job losses and pension cuts. In short this means a fight to preserve a permanent, properly trained and rewarded Civil Service. We must also step up our campaigning to stop climate change.

The Broad Left Network will have a vital part to play in the struggles ahead. We must hold the current PCS leadership to account. Marion Lloyd won a tremendous vote in the General Secretary election, as did Bev Laidlaw, who came third. The NEC must take into account the views of those members, who include many key Union activists. They want:

• A return to a member led union
• A joined-up strategy to rebuild PCS which links bargaining to organising
• A fight back against office closures to save jobs, with PCS Groups and National Branches fully consulted and
• Lay structures (the activists who are PCS members), and not full-time officials, directing the best use of union resources.

The Broad Left Network will be standing candidates in the PCS 2020 elections with a programme to counter the Tory attacks and fighting to defend our members interests. Attend the event we have called on the 18^th January in Manchester. Join us in this struggle by joining the BLN.