Author: pcsbln

PCS Conference took place last week and despite the usual chicanery, delegates across PCS declared their determination to fight against cuts to pay, cuts to jobs, closures of offices and restrictions to flexible and hybrid working.

However, there was a stormy start to ADC on the first afternoon. 25 emergency motions on trans rights were removed from the agenda following spurious legal advice on the back of the Supreme Court ruling. This was on top of General Secretary Fran Heathcote and President Martin Cavanagh taking it upon themselves to issue an offensive and inflammatory “statement” to delegates about the use of toilet facilities and a premature, biased interpretation of what the law requires.

These motions if carried, would have reaffirmed PCS continued support for trans rights, supported members, and given a clear response of opposition to the Supreme Court ruling unifying our members against the attacks. And a further decision was made very late before the ADC opened to also exclude motion A57 which had already been published in the conference agenda. 

Again and again, conference refused to adopt standing orders attempting to get the motions back on the agenda. President Martin Cavanagh continued to use “legal advice” to block the repeated majority votes by conference to disregard this spurious advice and put the motion back onto the agenda. After over two hours of votes, a majority eventually agreed to adopt standing orders via a card vote.

Delegates later voted against one of the few emergency motions on trans rights that had survived the censorship, A385. If carried, it would have given licence to the new NEC to make decisions on what it would issue based on “legal advice”. Fiona Brittle, Broad Left Network NEC member gave a powerful speech on behalf of the NEC on why the Left Unity leadership of our union could not be trusted to implement the motion to support members given their deliberate exclusion of the better worded motions on trans and non-binary rights at ADC. Even the mover in her right of reply acknowledged there was no trust in the leadership and understood why delegates were going to oppose.

The cynical nature of the exclusion of motions, justified by President Martin Cavanagh as “protecting the union”, has since been exposed by other unions, including the National Education Union and University and College Union, adopting policy that does not shy away from criticising and demanding the overturn of the EHRC interim guidance that promotes policing toilet use by employers.

License to fight Labour cuts: A383 passed

Despite efforts by the general secretary, Fran Heathcote, to talk down a “shopping basket of demands”, referencing motion A315 that passed the previous year, Conference doggedly passed motion A383. This laid out most clearly the attacks on civil servants, and the consequences for devolved government workers and our privatised members working on facilities management contracts.

Of central importance, the motion set a deadline of mid-September to start a ballot for strike action if the lack of progress in talks continues. Westminster departments face 15% cuts, and these have already begun to land. In the Cabinet Office, 1,200 job cuts have been announced. The government has announced renewal of efforts to cut London jobs by 12,000. A “review” of arm’s length bodies means cuts are also likely there.

A campaign on these issues is vital. Broad Left Network members on the union’s National Executive Committee (NEC), together with left allies, have been making this point for a year. Flattered by personal discussions with ministers, the general secretary has done nothing to prepare the union for a fight, despite motions calling for this being carried at the NEC in July 2024 and January 2025.

We do not believe the attitude of Heathcote or Cavanagh will change now that they once again have won a majority on the union’s NEC, in this year’s elections in May. Their inability to lead a fight with the government was proven in the 2022/23 strike wave; they waited for five weeks before calling any action, they called only three days of national action and, at the first offer, in June 2023, pulled the plug on the campaign.

Collusion with Labour?

Barely an hour after PCS Conference closed on Thursday 22 May, the government announced the civil service pay remit. This is guidance which sets out the pay parameters and covers all UK government departments and agencies. It provides a percentage figure by which each area can increase their total pay bill – meaning that, as a rule of thumb, pay rises mirror this figure. The figure set for 2025/26 is 3.25%, with leeway up to 3.75% for the low paid.

The timing of the announcement is suspect – and of course Cavanagh and Heathcote, on behalf of the ruling Left Unity faction, claimed 3.25% as a success, even though it falls short of the 4.1% 12-month rolling average for inflation, and does not represent additional funds for government departments that are already facing punitive cuts of 15%. Pay rises must be found within existing budgets.

All that can be said for certain is this. This announcement was not made without discussion with representatives from the trade unions. Yet the union’s NEC was not informed of any such discussions, and nor was PCS Conference. Conference instead heard re-heated Labour propaganda, that “headcount reduction targets have been abandoned”, from the general secretary. This is a concerning pattern.

Decisive left victory in Conference block vote

Elections to the union’s NEC are by individual ballot and were held before Conference convened. Radically reduced turnout saw all vote counts fall, but the opposite happened at the block vote elections. Not only did the left vote increase, this election returned all left candidate and of particular significance is winning two seats on the union’s National Standing Orders Committee (NSOC). This Committee is responsible for the unions’ conference agenda i.e. which motions will be discussed. Winning two seats is a vital step in re-opening PCS to democratic debate.

For years, a majority of NSOC have been supporters of the president and general secretary meaning that motions setting out an alternative are either not placed on the agenda or buried at the end of sections.

Against years of practice, motions submitted to conference by the NEC were not reached because of this bias. The difference this year is the president, and general secretary did not have a majority on the NEC and therefore motions were agreed that they did not support. To have discussed these, would have given an opportunity to set out an alternative by the left majority on the NEC, to the disadvantage of the president and general secretary.

More centrally to the democracy of Conference, NSOC rushed through the abolition of the guillotine section this year on the Wednesday morning. Attempts to “reference back”, i.e. to discuss a disagreement with this move, by DfE Y&H branch, were brushed off by Cavanagh, sitting as chair of conference.

The guillotine section allows motions missed due to time, to be put back on the agenda and discussed – this limits the scope for the president to play games by calling dozens of delegates in on uncontentious motions, to talk out anything they do not want heard.

It also limits the power of NSOC to put low down the agenda anything their pals the president and general secretary do not like, as it can still get into the guillotine section. This has happened a few times in the last few years, resulting in defeats of and embarrassment for the ruling Left Unity faction.

Tactics to bury motions were in full evidence this year, particularly motion A226, on giving branches means to contact their own members directly. First it was D-marked (can be cleared by correspondence), then X-marked (out of order) and finally A-marked (for debate) but buried below a dozen other motions in the hope it would not be reached. Thankfully, Conference delegates overturned this on Tuesday afternoon.

For more than a decade, (up to 2019 and the split in the left engineered by Mark Serwotka, Fran Heathcote and Martin Cavanagh), bureaucratic, obfuscatory techniques like this were not employed, and Conference developed a confidence in the National Standing Orders Committee to make sure key issues were debated at the top of every section, regardless of who they embarrassed.

Conference is gradually waking up to the fact that they can take nothing on trust and that, if delegates are not to lose control of the direction of the union, they will have to keep watchful control of Conference agenda papers and over everything else besides.

Build a fighting, democratic PCS to defeat austerity

The last year has been disorientating for activists across PCS. A left NEC was elected in May 2024 – and quickly found that, without the post of president or two-thirds of the seats (we won 19 out of 35), their majority could be and was ignored by the president and general secretary. Indeed, the institutions of the union – including branch briefings – were put to factional use by the president and general secretary to try and discredit the NEC.

Expecting a serious campaign, PCS activists were left holding on for another year while the union’s leadership argued amongst themselves. Anger from members over the levy was another complicating factor, as demonstrated by the censure of the NEC through motion A85. In absence of a campaign that justified collecting the levy, low paid members understandably wondered why they were bothering to pay it.

None of this changes the struggles that we will face over the next year. Cuts are coming. We must build a campaign across the whole union defeat these – if we don’t, cuts will continue. Inextricably linked to this is the battle to ensure PCS is accountable to its members and to their elected representatives at all levels – the battle for a fighting, democratic PCS. To all PCS reps and members fighting the cuts and fighting for equality at work and in the community, we urge you to join the PCS Broad Left Network and join with us to help rebuild the fighting strength of our union to stop the attacks.

A two-day PCS National Executive Committee has just concluded in London. Two key matters demonstrate why change is imperative in the national Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union elections that began on 16 April and why it is extremely important that members vote for Marion Lloyd and the coalition for change in PCS. NEC Elections 2025

Six hours of the meeting time were wasted on one paper – far from the most important paper at the April NEC – thanks to the continuing poor judgment of the General Secretary, Fran Heathcote, and President, Martin Cavanagh.

Following this, on the union’s national campaign for jobs, pay and against the austerity agenda which Labour now seems to be rolling out, the General Secretary moved a wildly complacent paper which proposed no meaningful actions and indeed noted that the attack on Arm’s Length Bodies (ALBs) across government was an “opportunity” but did not outline a national strategy to resist, deferring this until late May.

When Marion Lloyd proposed recommendations to add actions to the paper, to pro-actively build the confidence of members and reps to fight back, these proposals were once again vetoed by Cavanagh. Actions agreed in January – which Cavanagh has trumpeted as being “unanimous” – have still not been carried out.

“Democracy Alliance” try to bribe PCS members

All of this must be read in the context of the bribe promised to members who vote for them, of repaying to them the strike levy collected between late 2024 and early 2025. This strike fund is the money that would be used to fund any serious action to defeat the government’s cuts and to win us a pay rise.

The amount – £35 per member – is about 0.1% of an EO wage in DWP. The several million amassed could be used to win much more than an additional 0.1% pay raise for members.

Cavanagh and his “Democracy Alliance” do not have a plan to defeat the cuts or to win a pay rise. Having collapsed the union’s national campaign in 2023 and vetoed every attempt to build one in 2024, they can’t win any argument about stopping the cuts or fighting on pay, so this attempted bribe seeks to distract members from their lack of response to potentially 80,000 job cuts and a below-inflation 2025 pay rise.

Hours wasted on “Attitudes and Speakers at Conference” paper

Every year, the union’s NEC receives a copy of Standing Orders Committee Paper 1 (SOC1). This outlines all motions sent to Annual Delegate Conference from branches, and from the NEC itself. Every year, the NEC agrees a position and an NEC speaker on each motion. This year, that took a 6-hour debate thanks to Cavanagh and co.

Heathcote and Cavanagh put a paper to the NEC which outlined a whole range of positions which they knew beyond doubt would not be agreed by the NEC. They then forced the NEC to go through all 114 A-marked motions (i.e. those that will be debate at Conference) and forced a vote on every proposed change to the NEC paper.

When challenged, Cavanagh pushed back that it was open to the NEC majority to have submitted a paper in advance with their own views. The last time this happened, which was in relation to the allocation of Conference motions to NEC subcommittees to carry out, he vetoed the proposal, arguing that it contradicted the recommendation of the General Secretary.

There is no member or rep in PCS who would not agree that the way NEC business is conducted is ridiculous. This is entirely down to the inconsistent, partisan, undemocratic behaviour of Cavanagh as national president. Elections have begun. There is nothing else to be done beyond voting for Marion Lloyd and voting out of office Martin Cavanagh, who has been an absolute barrier to re-building PCS.

Defeat complacency and inertia at the top of PCS: vote Lloyd for President

A key discussion at the April NEC was the so-called “national campaign” on pay, pensions, jobs and workloads, office closures and many other issues including hybrid working, all of which dramatically impact our members. The NEC last discussed the national campaign on 14 February; in terms of actual campaigning, very little has happened, while the government have been busy laying plans.

For this reason, the NEC majority were surprised to have simple proposals – the only proposals on the table – vetoed by the President. Cavanagh spuriously argued that they contravened the Standing Orders because they proposed extending the length of the May NEC meeting. Agree or disagree, this only impacted one proposal – the Cavanagh did not mention the other clauses in ruling the motion out. It was left to Heathcote to argue that “we’re too close to conference”.

Too close to Conference to prepare to defend jobs! That’s a new low even for them.

The paper put forward by Heathcote referred to the situation with Arms’ Length Bodies as an “opportunity”, starting from the position that she does not necessarily support the existence of certain ALBs (sometimes called Quangos – quasi non-governmental organisations). This is the wrong position to start from: we must oppose cuts. Full stop.

Heathcote also seemed to draw a distinction between cuts and “arbitrary cuts”, which retreats from the general principle of opposition to cuts. “Arbitrary cuts” is the government’s language – they say they’re not undertaking “arbitrary cuts”, the opposite being “justified cuts”. All cuts result in impact to our members. They impact jobs and, even if exits are voluntary, they impact workloads and working practices.

We oppose all cuts. Increasingly, an NEC meeting with the General Secretary feels like listening to the voice of the Cabinet Office speaking through her to the NEC.

Government cuts incoming

Between 14 Feb and 16/17 April, national announcements have signalled a full-frontal attack on civil service staffing, with expectation of 15% cuts to “administrative” (i.e. staffing) budgets by 2030. This follows on from announcements in July 2024 about 2% cuts and announcements in October about 5% cuts.

What this will mean in practice is not known – but the Cabinet Office have already seen an announcement that 1,200 jobs are to go via exit. A further 900 jobs are due to be moved out of the Cabinet Office, and what that means is also unknown – none of this was discussed with the National Trade Union Committee before launch.

Other areas have already seen cuts to jobs via attrition (e.g. 5% job cuts in the Department for Education) and via hundreds of voluntary exits (e.g. at the Department for Transport). NHS England central staff have been told half of their jobs will go. Thousands of more job cuts already seem to be planned at the Ministry of Defence…and all of this is before HM Treasury responds to Departmental and agency submissions to the Spending Review that is currently under way.

Officials at the Cabinet Office leaked to the press that the Cabinet Office is “leading by example” in cutting a third of jobs in the department. Ellie Clarke, NEC member and union rep at the Cabinet Office characterised the mood as one of fear, especially for those with disabilities, or home working. The General Secretary’s response was dismissive, saying 700 staff had agreed to a voluntary exit, and she offered no other support or reassurance to Cabinet Office members whose jobs are under threat.

Another key part of the announcements has been a review of “Places for Growth”, which promises to move civil service jobs outside of London. There is major potential for this to hit jobs in London – both through actual job losses and through the constraining of opportunity for promotion or recruitment, while workloads rocket.

Also announced are a new idea, “mutually agreed exits”. What this actually means is also unclear, but in the private sector this means exits without paying people the redundancy pay which, in the civil service, they would be entitled to. All union members should be alarmed by the news coming out from the top of government.

Get the campaign started now!

The NEC majority proposed some simple steps to get things going now – and some of these proposals had been agreed in January but still had not been implemented:

• That in addition to the actions taken by FTOs as per MAB 06-25, that a branch briefing be issued to all groups and branches giving a full report of the discussions with the Cabinet Office and urging all branches to call members’ meetings in the period before Conference to explain the need for a campaign across PCS, to win our demands. Conference is the next step, to debate and agree a strategy. The bulletin should outline the key issues facing members that are under discussion with the Cabinet Office, including but not limited to:
  • The attack on jobs, especially announcements on NHS England, Cabinet Office etc) and the attack on ALBs etc.
  • Pay
  • Pensions
  • Office closures, job relocation and compulsory moves (incl. PfG).
  • Hybrid and flexible working
  • Privatisation
  • National bargaining
• To support the members’ meetings, that leaflets now be produced, as per the decision by the NEC in January 2025, updated to reflect the key attacks from the Labour government, our key demands, and the text of which should be agreed by the Senior Officers’ Committee. Alternative language to cover privatised and devolved areas should be circulated for input from relevant bodies: SEC, WEC, Comm Sector etc. Printing to be ready by end of April to support May members’ meetings.
• That the bargaining team with the Cabinet Office now be extended to add three lay reps, as per the NEC decision in January, with nominations to be accepted from the floor of this NEC.
• That the duration of the NEC in May be extended to allow for a full discussion of the Labour government-proposed cuts and how we build a campaign to defeat these attacks. A draft motion to ADC should be presented by the General Secretary for discussion at that meeting, and if not dealt with by the Senior Officers beforehand, a draft national pay claim should be tabled for the May NEC also. This should be able to take account of the revised Places for Growth (PfG) strategy, which is likely to be published in late April and which may have a serious impact on London-based PCS members.

In the background to all of this, the Labour government is steadily retreating from many commitments as part of the original draft of the Employment Rights Bill, most recently their pledge to repeal the 50% strike ballot threshold requirement imposed by the Anti-Trade Union Act 2016.

We need to keep reps and members fully informed. This NEC must continue to provide leadership right up until the day it leaves office, when it comes to fighting for the basic interests of members – for a proper pay rise, against job cuts and compulsory relocation of work and so on. The attack on ALBs will certainly involve centralisation of function and job cuts; concrete steps to oppose should be prepared now.

This NEC was an NEC like many others this year, thanks to how they have been run by the chair, Martin Cavanagh. The General Secretary wastes time by literally reading out her papers. Then straightforward, obvious things – even previously agreed matters – are either vetoed or not carried out. Cavanagh and Heathcote are an absolute catastrophe in progress, for our members. There is no room for their complacency.

They must go.

We urge all reps to get involved with the Broad Left Network. We urge all activists and members in all parts of the union to vote for Marion Lloyd and the coalition for change, of PCS Broad Left Network, of PCS Independent Left and independent socialists in HMRC. It is absolutely time for a change.

Within hours of the conclusion of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of 14 February, memes, a video from the General Secretary and an all-members email had gone out proclaiming the ‘Good News’, that the union’s strike levy had been scrapped.  

All Broad Left Network supporters present at the NEC voted against the termination of the levy, as did two independent socialists, believing that the levy continued to be necessary if we were serious about winning a good deal for members on pay and conditions like hybrid working, and on reversing job cuts, in 2025. 

The levy was originally introduced by the previous NEC, which was dominated by the mis-named ‘Left Unity’ grouping. General Secretary Fran Heathcote and national president Martin Cavanagh are members of LU. They have blocked the decision of the incoming NEC, where the left coalition has a majority, at its meeting last July to review the levy with an immediate reduction for the lowest paid members.  

In reality, this is not good news at all. January and February’s NEC meetings demonstrate with stark clarity that Heathcote, Cavanagh and their rump of supporters have no plan to fight in 2025. Worse, they have now telegraphed this message to a hostile set of employers – be it the New Labour government of Starmer and Reeves, Westminster departments, agencies or devolved areas. 

Inaction by Cavanagh and Heathcote after January NEC 

At the preceding NEC meeting, on 15 January, the General Secretary, Fran Heathcote, put forward a paper with zero recommendations. It merely reported on discussions with the Cabinet Office. Nothing in that report of discussions represents a significant step forward and so Broad Left Network supporters put forward the need to prepare for and build the necessary campaign to win on pay, jobs and our working environment. 

That such a campaign is needed should be beyond doubt. Job cuts are proceeding in Westminster departments, a major dispute of outsourced staff against their behemoth employers continues to rage despite Angela Rayner’s promise of the most insourcing government for a generation. There is little movement on pay anywhere. 

Since the GS’s January paper did not recommend anything, there was no excuse to rule the motion out. The BLN-proposed, Majority Left-backed motion, passed. President Martin Cavanagh and his supporters praised themselves for being willing to support the motion and promptly began acting like they had proposed it themselves. 

From there, everything went immediately off the rails. 

Only one instruction in the motion – for NEC Liaison Officers (NECLOs) go out and consult every area – was actioned. The others, of production of materials etc, of the very basic steps to put the union on a war footing, have been ignored. 

Despite the NEC agreeing basic steps in January, nothing has been done to start the process of readying PCS for a pivotal next few months, in which, amongst other things, the Cabinet Office will publish the Civil Service Pay Remit for 2025/26. Reeves is already on record indicating that pay rises will be 2.8%, about half of last year’s inadequate offer. Inflation stands at 3%. Inaction is not accidental: it is obstruction by President Cavanagh and General Secretary Heathcote. 

Majority left coalition meets in February to discuss NECLO feedback 

There are 8 Broad Left Network supporters, 4 independent socialists and 7 Independent Left supporters on the union’s NEC this year. Many are NECLOs for different parts of the union. These NEC members, collectively called the Left Majority, met together to discuss the feedback from these areas. 

We concluded that much more work had to be done by the union’s elected leadership to give our reps and members confidence that a struggle could win. Steps must be taken to win support across the union’s membership for our key demands. But the basic elements of the kind of campaign including the necessary strike action that could win must also be outlined. 

These basic elements include national all-members strike action, supplemented by paid targeted strikes aimed at specific areas. This would put enormous pressure on the ordinary functioning of the government. Such an approach is not new, but it is expensive, requiring millions of pounds to ensure that members asked to go on strike are not failing to cover bills, rent, food etc. 

Campaign-building motion written and proposed to February NEC 

On this basis a motion – which is reprinted here – was proposed to the NEC. This set out what steps needed to be taken to build a campaign now, rather than simply wait and hope, as Cavanagh and Heathcote seem to be doing, based on their zero substantive proposals on a campaign to either January or February NECs. 

The motion also included two vital elements.  

Firstly, as we have been proposing since the July NEC, that the levy should immediately be reduced for the lowest paid PCS members and reviewed with a view to putting in place something more permanent and across the whole union. Part of this would include an analysis to identify how much we need to collect to make any paid action effective and sustainable.  

Two: that steps be taken urgently to ensure every branch can contact its own members. This reflects a pressing demand from branches that have been trying like hell to recruit, retain and organise members across PCS. 

When the NEC convened on 14 Feb, Cavanagh, as President, vetoed the motion. 

Wrecking tactics like this have been continuous from the President and General Secretary since the first NEC meeting of the electoral year in June 2024. Having wrecked the national campaign in 2023 by settling for the £1500 one-time payment, when they should have pressed for more, their constant tactics are delay and derailing left proposals. 

Independent Left act to end the levy 

Immediately following the decision to veto the motion, and a challenge to that decision – which was passed by the NEC but did not achieve the required 2/3rds majority – Independent Left members demanded that a vote be taken to revisit the question of suspending the union’s strike levy. 

IL are an integral part of the majority left coalition which defeated Cavanagh and Heathcote’s Left Unity in the May 2024 union elections, and which is standing again in the forthcoming elections. On the question of the levy, we do not agree with their decision to seek the end of the levy and believe it to be shortsighted. 

A mistake has been made by IL in our view. But that aside, the key question that needs to be addressed is what does the union need to win a decisive victory for members in the battle on pay, pensions, jobs, and working conditions like hybrid? And if paid action is to form part of that campaign, the thorny issue of how will this be funded? It is in recognition of this that the BLN proposed a reduce and review in the July meeting. We do still need a levy. 

This can be demonstrated concretely in figures, based on the amount spent in the targeted strike wave of 2022-2023, and comparing that to the amounts available to the union now. We choose not to reproduce exact figures as this is a public forum, but we do not have the same resources as we had at the end of 2022, ready for the strike wave ahead. A levy makes up the difference and more. 

There is also significant paid action taking place by our outsourced members as well as other disputes across the union. The union’s fighting fund is in overdraft, yet the General Secretary and National President dishonestly argue that this is somehow separate.  

Unfortunately, IL’s mistake gave Cavanagh, Heathcote and their Left Unity coterie sufficient votes to terminate the levy – without having to answer the question, what way forward to a serious campaign on the issues that matter to members in 2025? And how will we fund it? This is a question that Heathcote and Cavanagh cannot answer, given the confusion their disinformation and poor leadership have wrought in PCS. 

Basic unity of the real PCS left remains intact 

BLN will continue to make the case for a coherent strategy that can win the support of thousands of PCS reps across all bargaining units, and behind which can be mobilised hundreds of thousands of civil servants, outsourced workers and workers in arm’s length bodies.  

While we may differ with IL on some of the tactics and how they might be funded, we remain absolutely united in our belief that we must build the necessary campaign to win and to do that requires the removal of Cavanagh and Heathcote, their Left Unity nodding donkeys and their blocking tactics. 

It is for this reason that the Majority Left Coalition is putting forward Marion Lloyd for President and a united slate of left candidates to lead the union and build this campaign. It is for this reason that we urge all comrades to get involved in building the broadest challenge and the broadest base for re-establishing a fighting, democratic PCS. 

Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) has finally had a reply from the government, the same government that in its run up to election, had stated they would support compensation for women disadvantaged by rapid and often confusing changes to pensions under the previous Tory government. Disgracefully the Labour government has said no: no, they will not, that people should have known about the changes and acted accordingly.

The Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman has “investigated complaints that, since 1995, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has failed to provide accurate, adequate and timely information about areas of State Pension reform.” (Women’s State Pension age and associated issues: investigation summary | Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO))

Their investigation showed maladministration and injustice.

Women of retirement age had clearly lost benefits due to a series of poorly communicated changes. The ombudsman also makes it clear that it is very rare for organisations where they have proved maladministration to not pay up.  But they recognise that given the stance of the DWP this was unlikely to happen which is why they referred it to the Government.

Women, older women, the ones discriminated against in the workplace from finding suitable replacement jobs and not minimum wage work, have suffered financially and mentally due to the stress of their planned retirement being changed within one year of retirement when the goalposts were suddenly and significantly moved by the Government.

Yet the senior Labour politicians who categorically said they supported compensating these women, prior to being elected to Government, have now stated they will not.

These are our colleagues, people we’ve worked with, women in our communities, perhaps a family member. 3.6 million women are affected.

And we need to defend them. I would ask all BLN members to reach out to their local councils, their own GECs, asking for a clear statement of support for the WASPI campaign. We can still bring pressure to bear on the government to do what the Ombudsman has recommended and partially compensate these colleagues and comrades.

The two-day National Executive Committee of the union opened on 4 December with two major rows and a threat by the President to adjourn the NEC, which he did not carry out. Marion Lloyd, NEC member and Group President of DSIT Group, intervened before the main agenda to query the absence of a report on the branches that had submitted motions calling for a Special Delegate Conference (SDC).

Since September, union reps and members across PCS have been asking questions about the lack of any serious campaigning action from the union on pay, pensions, redundancy rights and – ever more importantly as Labour tighten the screws on departments – jobs. This inaction is not for want of trying by the NEC majority, 19 out of 35 NEC members, which consists of supporters of the Broad Left Network, the Independent Left and independent socialists.

In consequence of this inaction, however, branches have been debating the question of an SDC, to hold the leadership of PCS – especially the President and the General Secretary – to account for their actions. This has met with undemocratic bureaucratic manoeuvring by Cavanagh and Heathcote, including through their use – without agreement of the NEC – to put out messages to all members in branches passing a motion calling for an SDC to attack the views of elected reps in those branches.

Cavanagh, in the chair of the NEC, responded to Marion by arguing that all the submissions from branches calling an SDC were being treated as correspondence because the vast majority (he alleged, without providing figures) had refused to stipulate whether their call for an SDC or their passage of a motion calling for a SDC had been passed by a branch Extraordinary General Meeting.

There is no requirement for a branch EGM to be held, to vote for a Special Delegate Conference, so this is an attempt by the President to raise the bar to be able to throw out the requests by branches for an SDC. This provoked immediate anger.

Gemma Criddle, Annette Wright, Fiona Brittle, Bev Laidlaw and Marion herself each intervened to point out the deep flaws in what the president had said. Marion highlighted how she had made clear, in writing to Cavanagh and to General Secretary Heathcote, that her motion calling for an SDC had been passed by a branch meeting and yet had still not been circulated to the NEC as per 6.2 of the NEC Standing Orders.

Annette Wright, in particular, skewered the spurious argument of the President that he “cannot be sure that these motions were passed at valid EGMs, I only have your word to rely on for that” by pointing out that her branch EGM had passed two motions, and one of these had been circulated to the NEC (i.e. it was clearly accepted as valid), whereas the one calling for an SDC had not been circulated to the NEC.

Gemma Criddle pointed out that, in Revenue and Customs Group, the GEC had voted to write to branches to suggest that they should call EGMs to discuss the question of an SDC. This decision was blocked by the unelected Group Secretary, an employee of the union. Similar decisions to block decisions by Group Executives, e.g. in Education Group, were likewise blocked by unelected staff of the union.

Fiona Brittle rightly pointed out that the real matter at issue here was the absolute unwillingness of the Cavanagh and Heathcote to call a Special Delegate Conference.

The whole discussion descended into farce when Cavanagh kept repeating that a member of the NEC majority had submitted a motion to the NEC calling for an SDC, so the question of an SDC was on the agenda.

The President had evidently forgotten that he had vetoed a motion at the previous NEC on 7 November, containing exactly the same instruction, but, even more ridiculously, Cavanagh was directly asked, “can we have an assurance that you will not veto that motion and will allow it to be debated?”, he replied, “We’ve not gotten to that part of the agenda yet”.

Annette Wright insisted that Cavanagh put to the vote a suggestion that all the motions passed by branches be reported to the NEC for debate before the NEC adjourned on 5 December. Cavanagh would not make that commitment and would not put the proposal to a vote, as he would have lost. At this point tempers began to fray, as the majority have faced 7 months from May to December of wholesale obstruction by Cavanagh in his role as President.

Cavanagh threatened to evict Marion from the meeting, then threatened to adjourn the meeting, realising he was trapped. After some back and forth, Cavanagh issued a ruling, that he would report back the motions voted on by branches to the NEC – but crucially, without stipulating that this would happen before the next NEC in mid-January 2025, much too late for an effective Special Delegate Conference.

The NEC majority at this point voted to challenge the chair’s ruling 16-14, but as this was not a two-thirds majority, the ruling stood. In a nutshell this is how every single NEC meeting has progressed. No matter what the left majority on the NEC put forward in respect of building the union’s national campaign, 90% of it is simply vetoed by the President, and his Democracy Alliance faction (16 of 35 NEC members) vote to uphold his decision, preventing a two-thirds majority from overturning the obstruction.

Heathcote and Cavanagh abandon the idea of a national campaign altogether

The first day of the two-day NEC also debated the question of the union’s “national campaign”. This is the title given to papers moved by the General Secretary that deal with our national fight, across multiple civil service departments, on pay, on pensions, on redundancy rights and jobs. Since Conference 2024, it also includes matters like hybrid working, office closures and the fight for 100,000 civil service jobs.

The paper put by the General Secretary contained one recommendation only. The recommendation was to “pause the levy” that members have been paying at a rate of £3 or £5 since June 2024, building up the strike fund for a major campaign.

It is preposterous that the General Secretary of the union would come to the last NEC of the year with nothing serious to propose to the NEC on our most important campaigns, except that we call off the levy that might fund serious action. It should not be surprising, considering that Heathcote has collaborated with the President to veto anything resembling a strategy that has been proposed since May. This extended to a motion proposed by the majority left to the NEC on 4/5 December.

Nevertheless, the question of the levy goes to the heart of the differences between the majority left and the Democracy Alliance rump, who lost their NEC majority for in May 2024 for the first time in twenty years. It is worth taking a moment to explain the full context.

The levy was originally introduced in February 2023, three months after the union won a national strike mandate (in November 2022) on our key demands for a 10% pay rise, for pension justice, for a reversal of the attack on the civil service compensation scheme and for a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies. This was used to top up several million pounds set aside by the then-NEC from the settlements won from UK government departments (esp. DWP) over the removal of our contractual right to pay our union subs by check-off.

The levy, along with the national campaign, was abandoned by the NEC in June 2023 at the time when the Tory government offered a £1,500, one-off, non-consolidated, pro-rata payment. Instead of doubling down and taking advantage of the government’s weakness, the NEC cancelled all strike action, cancelled the levy and cancelled all the strike ballots. An extraordinarily dishonest ballot was conducted in Autumn 2023 that told members to “Vote Yes to continue the campaign”.

Members voted yes, and the then NEC promptly used this as an excuse to cancel the campaign. Between June 2023 and March 2024, there was a deafening silence from the top of the union. Then in March, the then-NEC, still under the Democracy Alliance faction, launched a further national strike ballot without any serious preparation. That ballot was successful for 20,000 members, but did not meet the 50% turnout threshold for 110,000+ members.

That ballot result was received prior to the union’s Annual Delegate Conference meeting in May 2024, and prior to the outcome of national elections that began in April 2024, and which concluded in May 2024. The union’s NEC, with a month left in its term of office, voted to reinstate the levy. No attempt was made to explain seriously to members what the strategy would be, when this levy was reimplemented.

Two things then happened in quick succession. First, the Democracy Alliance-led NEC was ousted from office, reduced from holding 33 seats of the 35 seat NEC to 14. Second, the union’s Annual Delegate Conference demanded a much more serious strategy than had existed before, rejecting entirely the lackadaisical approach of the union’s leadership up to May 2024. This left the levy, which was not voted on by the new NEC or by the Conference, as being implemented by default.

The first time the levy was discussed at the union’s National Executive Committee, under the new majority, was in July when Marion Lloyd expressly attempted to propose that the levy be subject to a review, to make sure that it was fit for purpose and that the burden on the lowest paid members was not an undue burden. This proposal was agreed by the NEC. It was never implemented as, at the next NEC, it was missed off the Record of Decisions (RoD) by the General Secretary. An attempt was made at that NEC to amend the RoD was vetoed by the President.

At whiles since then, the question of the levy has surfaced at NEC meetings and at every stage, the view of the majority left has been consistent: the levy should be reviewed considering the industrial position and to reduce the burden on the lowest paid members of PCS. Every time it has come up, as part of motions proposed to the NEC by the majority left, it has been vetoed by Cavanagh as national president.

It came up again at NEC on 7 November, when the NEC minority made a half-hearted attempt to cancel the levy, and this was voted down by the NEC majority. That leads us to the NEC of 4-5 December, at which the only proposal from the General Secretary on the national campaign was to cancel the strike levy (again), on the basis that the strike mandate for the 20,000 achieved in May 2024 has now lapsed and there is no immediate move to a further ballot for action.

Put another way, Heathcote and Cavanagh have actively caused a massive obstruction to and delay of our national campaign, and are now using that delay to argue that, as we’re not planning for immediate targeted strike action, there is no need for the levy.

Why maintain the strike levy if there is no immediate strike action planned?

This is the way Cavanagh and Heathcote and their supporters are framing the question, and we have no hesitation in answering.

You don’t take the bullets out of your gun when a shoot-out is looming.

After taking office, the new Labour government offered a sop to civil servants, by setting a civil service pay remit of 5%. This does not automatically translate as a 5% pay rise, it is permission to Departments to increase their pay bill by 5%, without offering them extra money to pay for it. This means that Departments can offer 5% if they can find cuts in other areas, including public services, or can go higher than 5% at this or that grade if it is balanced by savings elsewhere in the pay bill.

Faced with an offer of 5% in late September 2024, and with most areas having failed to get through the 50% ballot turnout threshold in May’s strike ballot, many reps across the union were willing to take the 5% and settle. The NEC left majority would have preferred a campaigning posture, but at every stage – including in the calling of Senior Lay Reps forums – this approach was undermined by the attitude of Cavanagh and Heathcote, defaulting to their “oh well, if you want to put in a strike submission go ahead” attitude to groups and branches, abdicating any responsibility of leadership.

Temporarily, therefore, pay has receded as the most pressing issue facing members. The key word is “temporarily”. The 2% average pay rise in 2022, the 4.5% average pay rise in 2023 and the 5% average pay rise in 2024 must be set against cumulative 17% rise in costs over that period, to say nothing of more than a decade since 2010 of pay freezes and 1% pay rises that have eroded civil service pay.

This has been relied upon by the Democracy Alliance minority on the NEC, with quips such as “look at how well Home Office have done, they aren’t going to want to take strike action, are they?”

Yet inflation has not gone away, and winter is coming, with heating bills and transport costs that look set to dramatically increase in price, well beyond the average rates of price inflation. If this is met, in early 2025, with a clamp-down on civil service pay, pay will very quickly flare back up again. The fastest way to encourage such a clamp down is to step down the major source of funding for our targeted strike action even before discussions have begun between the Cabinet Office and PCS on civil service pay.

Heathcote even reported that there are “pay and reward” preliminary discussions scheduled to begin in the next few weeks with the Cabinet Office. What a signal to send to ministers just prior to crucial talks, that we aren’t prepared to fight on pay.

There is another key issue facing civil service departments over the next period. Jobs. Motion A315, passed at Conference in 2024, outlined the need not simply to fight for a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies, but to fight for 100,000 additional civil service jobs. This is contrast to the government, which has moved to redundancies in the Department for Transport, and which is cutting jobs across the civil service-including the MOD which has just announced 5,600 job cuts which come on top of a recruitment freeze which was due to end in 2025.

Johnson and Sunak each announced headline job cuts in the civil service – the intention to cut between 66,000 and 90,000 civil service jobs. Labour have removed that headline aspiration but have not withdrawn the funding straitjacket that underpins the logic of job cuts.

At present, most areas are gradually running down staffing levels via “attrition”, i.e. where people leave through retirement, ill-health, taking other jobs etc, which impacts staff by redistributing the work of anyone who leaves on to those who remain. Higher workloads and higher stress are hardly what the doctor ordered for the UK Civil Service, so this is bad enough, but the option for redundancies and even more swingeing job cuts has not been ruled out by the new government.

This is to say nothing of the possibilities of further cuts to office estates, and the consequent impact to staffing and workloads.

This government is not the friend of workers, and anyone who imagines that gains will happen for civil servants – or any other section of the working class – simply by osmosis, is wrong. We must be ready to fight on defensive issues like further pay cuts relative to inflation, further erosion of our rights, attacks on our jobs or attempts to offload higher workloads on to hard-pressed civil servants.

A well-stocked levy is an insurance policy that the union has the wherewithal to resist attacks and to take on a government that repeats Tory or New Labour tactics of trying to force government workers to suffer as the result of wider economic maladies.

This is not to say the levy is perfect; we continue to be concerned that a significant burden is being borne by low paid members in those bargaining areas that are part of the national campaign, and where the levy is therefore being paid. We remain committed to a review to limit the impact of the levy on the low paid. The logic of a levy to support sustained strike action to wreak maximum disruption on the government to force them to bargain properly with the union is unimpeachable.

We are not prepared to surrender such a weapon at an absolutely crucial part of the bargaining cycle, while the Comprehensive Spending Review is under way (setting budgets for civil service departments for at least a year), while preliminary discussions on pay and reward are pending, and while no meaningful engagement has taken place on any of the key priorities of the union in the civil service has yet taken place.

The whole-day NEC meeting on 7th November followed a by-now well-worn format. The left majority on the NEC proposed a motion to demand steps be taken to rebuild the union’s national campaign on pay, pensions, jobs and rights. This was immediately vetoed by national President Martin Cavanagh so that no discussion could take place.

The motion, proposed by PCS Vice President Dave Semple, and seconded by independent socialist Annette Wright, urged the calling of a Special Delegate Conference. Scores of branches representing tens of thousands of PCS members have written to the General Secretary, Fran Heathcote, demanding a Special Delegate Conference be called to debate the stalled national campaign.

Branches reject Heathcote and Cavanagh paralysis

Strike action against facilities and security contractors, such as G4S, OCS and ISS has not been matched by strike action in civil service departments. This is despite the rejection of awards of around 5% across civil service areas. It was revealed last week that partly this is because the General Secretary had falsely stated that the NEC had decided not to permit action under the mandate won by 20,000 members in the ballot ending in May 2024.

In fact the NEC in July expressly voted to allow for action to be taken under the mandate won by members in areas like Land Registry and the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

Branches, angry at the distortions put out by Heathcote and by Cavanagh, have sought to break the deadlock created by Martin Cavanagh’s vetoes by voting to call a Special Delegate Conference under the rules of the union. The motion of the NEC majority, put forward on Thursday, intended to give effect to that.

Heathcote and Cavanagh, both part of a faction known as “Left Unity”, have already stated that they are unwilling to call such a Conference because they fear it will be used to “attack” them.

The “attacks” they fear are the exposure in front of members and reps of the undemocratic methods they have used to reduce the NEC to virtual paralysis – a blocking of  the national campaign and stopping progress on other important issues . They also fear exposure of the ways in which the General Secretary has created a whole new, very well paid, top management tier in PCS, to embed her dictatorial control of the union.

A majority of the NEC – 19 against 16 – fully support the calling of a Special Delegate Conference. The left majority coalition on the NEC won the May 2024 elections on a platform of building a serious national campaign and of democratising PCS. 

Left Unity lies on the levy

The levy was introduced in February 2023 and was abruptly terminated when Heathcote and Cavanagh sabotaged the union’s industrial campaign on pay, pensions, jobs and rights in June 2023.

Before Left Unity lost it’s majority on the NEC in May of this year they  pushed through the relaunch of the strike levy.

From July onwards, a majority of NEC members have called for a review of the levy. This has been voted on once, in early July, and was then deliberately ignored in the Record of Decisions put by Heathcote to the July NEC. It was also agreed as part of the Record of Decisions of the Organising and Education Committee of the NEC, and has since been ignored by Heathcote and Cavanagh.

Every other time it has been raised, the call to review has been met with a veto – and Thursday was no exception. A review would aim to reduce the burden on the lowest paid while looking in detail at what money is needed to fund effective strike action now and in the near future.

Having vetoed the idea of a review, Heathcote and Cavanagh’s rump of Left Unity supporters on the union’s NEC began, opportunistically, calling for total cancellation of the levy, arguing that members cannot afford it. These are the same people who, over the last two years, each time the question of national strike action came up, argued that members could not afford it.

They now argue that members cannot afford a levy, they also argue that members cannot afford national strike action…so they are in fact arguing that members cannot afford a serious campaign of any kind!

What union members cannot afford is the scandalous misuse of official union communications for political point scoring by Heathcote and Cavanagh and their continuous obstruction of the left majority’s efforts to review the strike levy and rebuild the national campaign.

There are a number of questions to be asked about the levy, and the NEC majority has been asking them and getting no answer since June. Unilateral cancellation, however, would send a powerful signal to the government at a time when the Comprehensive Spending Review is ongoing and cuts are being planned. Cancelling the levy in this context, without offering a serious industrial strategy, to PCS members would be tantamount to surrender.

Undemocratic manoeuvres then lies over union finance

Far too much time at the NEC is taken up by rows deliberately provoked by Heathcote. The latest was a paper in which she sought to curtail what NEC liaison officers could say when meeting with groups and regional committees. There is no collective responsibility on the NEC; members are free to give their view of events when attending meetings within PCS. Heathcote’s paper was a deliberate attack on the freedom of speech essential to union democracy. It wasted hours.

Heathcote followed this up with a Finance paper that binned the recommendations of the union’s elected Finance Committee in respect of the assumptions that should underpin the creation of the PCS budget for 2025, a process that begins in November each year.

The Finance Committee decided that the starting assumptions should be a 0% increase of members’ subs, a 0% increase in the staffing budget in PCS, and a 0% increase to all other costs. Variation to these is almost inevitable – and this was acknowledged by the Finance Committee.

Key to the whole proposal was the suggestion that variations to these assumptions should be scrutinised by the elected Finance Committee, before a final picture was presented to the December NEC. This would allow the Finance Committee to check that budget holders really were doing everything they could to hold down costs while still funding those things that matter to members, to reps and to our campaigns.

Heathcote refused to put the paper from the Finance Committee to the NEC. Instead, she proposed assumptions of a 5% increase to membership subscriptions, a 5% increase to PCS staff budgets and an assumption of 2.5% increases on all general expenditure.

Left Unity allies of Heathcote and Cavanagh came into debate one after the other, denouncing the proposals from the Finance Committee as “the same as the Tories”. They attempted to argue that the 5% increase proposed to the staffing budget was purely about staff pay in PCS (it isn’t) and that the left majority do not want to pay staff in PCS fairly (not true). They argued that the majority were calling for “austerity” in PCS.

Not one of these arguments was true. The majority’s goal was simple: before we put up subs by a single penny, we must make sure that no spending anywhere in the union is wasteful and that there are no savings to be made without impacting branches and campaigns. The utterly false arguments about PCS staff pay put forward by Left Unity are part of an ongoing attempt by the senior managers of PCS to use the staff union, GMB, against the elected lay leadership of PCS.

The viciousness of the debate, however, reflects the pressure now being exerted on Heathcote, Cavanagh and their allies. Members and activists are getting restive at the total lack of action – and it is painfully evident, when Heathcote and Cavanagh’s undemocratic tactics are explained, who is responsible for this: they are to blame.

The majority left coalition came away from the NEC all the more determined to build up an unstoppable force from within the membership and activist layers of the union, to sweep away the bureaucratic obstacles and the lies told in ever increasing volume by Heathcote and Cavanagh. Each NEC meeting and the obstruction we face reinforces our belief that renewal of the democracy in PCS is absolutely vital if we are going to successfully fight and win our battles on pay, jobs, pensions and other issues. The new Labour government  has already made clear it’s looking for cuts and we need to ensure our union is able to defend members’ jobs and the services we provide.

If your branch has not already agreed to support the call for a Special Delegate Conference it’s urgent it does so. The November NEC showed, once again, the need for a Special Delegate Conference to rebuild the national campaign on pay, pensions, jobs and other vital issues and to make clear who runs the union.