Author: pcsbln

Despite protestations for unity from those who wanted to limit discussion at our union conference – the strategy of the Broad Left Network was heard loud and clear on the conference floor – putting forward the tactics to take our union campaigning forward. And getting an increasing echo.

Whilst everyone was in agreement that we needed to ensure that areas which had missed out on getting the Tory anti-union 50% threshold would get re-balloted to get the strike mandate – there was not an overwhelming endorsement of the limited tactics of the Left Unity (LU) leadership for more of the same.  Members may be struggling to make ends meet but they are increasingly recognising that we need a stronger campaign to take on the Government and win. As evidenced by the action being taken across the rest of the public sector.  Broad Left Network members will be at the fore in fighting to win strike ballots whilst arguing for the most effective action to defeat the government.

There is a failure to understand from the LU leadership that to fully develop our demands for the National Climate Service and to get these demands out into the wider trade union and environmental movement that we need to actively involve our reps and members. This led to them opposing a green motion in the DWP but delegates overturned this recommendation and we have good policies carried in both the DWP Group conference and ADC.

The emergency motion calling for all the union elections for the General Secretary, Assistant General Secretary and the NEC to be run at the same time next year was only narrowly defeated.  The debate highlighted the discussion to nominate all the candidates could have been done at the AGMs and turnout could have been increased with the union just focussing on elections all at the same time.  Instead, we are expected to prepare for this election at a time when reps and members are 100% committed to winning our dispute on pay and jobs

The debate on the complaint about the block vote elections showed how the LU leadership are incapable of just admitting that they have done anything wrong. This leadership pushed to get conference to agree that it was fine for them to break the rules of the union despite the complaint about the block vote elections being upheld.  They had the opportunity to put in rule changes to adjust the rules for these elections to take into account delegates online both this year and last year and failed to competently do so last year. Instead of taking the upheld complaint on the chin they chose to malign the member trustees and the complainant for pointing this out.   Whilst there was recognition that it was difficult to do anything to remedy the breach at this late stage the LU NEC tried to use this to cover the fact that they had breached the rules of our union. The BLN member on the NEC had already told them how they could have run the election involving all delegates in accordance with the rules but they chose not to do so. They had better pull their socks up and do it properly next year.

All the divisions between the out of touch top table and the delegates really came to a head over the equality debates. The NEC had dishonestly attempted to dress up the attack on Proud in a motion A41 where the rest of the demands were innocuous ways to improve equality that could have easily already have been put in place.  Delegates saw through this veiled attack and voted to support A293 instead.  But LU were not content to recognise their defeat on the attacks on Proud. They then proceeded to pack in speakers following the lacklustre presentation of the national organising strategy. This was done under the instructions of the president Fran Heathcote messaging their members to actively prevent delegates getting to debate A50.  The anger at the way this was done meant that the WhatsApp messages very quickly were made public. A BLN member attempted to make a point of order to highlight that the President Fran Heathcote was breaking the Principal Rule 1f of our union to promote equality for all with the blatant bias against our LGBT+ members. Whilst challenging the ruling of the President that this was not a point of order did not succeed, the evidence of how the President Fran Heathcote had worked to stifle debate at our conference circulated widely amongst delegates and many branches responded to put motion A50 into the guillotine section.  Again, the LU NEC tried to ensure that this motion was talked out of time by packing the speakers into the guillotine section where traditionally motions which are widely or unanimously supported are moved very quickly and seconded formally to get as much policy picked up in this section as possible.  But despite these further machinations motion A50 was moved to highlight how the well-respected Trans activist Saorsa-Amatheia Tweedale had been removed from the TUC LGBT+ committee without any warning or consultation with our LGBT+ Proud committee.  The NEC speaker asserted that it was too late to do anything and urged conference to vote against the motion but delegates were clear that they wanted the flawed decision reversed and voted overwhelmingly to carry motion A50.  Conference has overwhelmingly supported our trans and non-binary members every year and passed policy that the LU leadership does everything it can to ignore and undermine in favour of its divisive stance to pit equality groups against each other. Yet again they have been defeated.

So, conference far from being the stage-managed election campaign to appoint the successor to Serwotka when he retires next year, many of our long-standing activists reflected that we had not seen such tactics employed at our conference since the bad old days under the old right wing.  The handling of the debates, the challenges and treatment of anyone who did not agree with the LU NEC very much damaged the standing of the President Fran Heathcote and tarnished the attempts to coronate her as the successor to the GS.

We must have unity in action to defeat this government and build the highest turnout in all the strike ballots.  But the idea of unity should never be used to undermine the hard-won democratic traditions of our union to discuss the best tactics to win and build an inclusive fighting union.

From 21^st to 24^th April, Extinction Rebellion, as part of a coalition of many organisations, including PCS, is organising “the Big One”, an attempt to involve 100,000 people in a continuous protest outside Parliament. Broad Left Network supports this and urges all PCS members in the vicinity to attend before work, during their lunch time or after work, to give support to the demands of the protest.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) demands that the government “Tell the Truth”, “Acts Now” and that we “Decide Together” on our post-fossil fuel future, where economic activity does not damage the environment and threaten the lives of billions of people around the planet. Immediately this would mean ceasing to extract fossil fuels from the ground, while transitioning to different energy sources.

Broad Left Network supporters in PCS have played an extremely important role in devising the union’s approach to this issue. The idea of a “Just Transition”, where workers are not made to suffer or pay the cost of a move away from an economy that depends on fossil fuels, whilst the owners of that economy continue to rake in billions of pounds in profit, is crucial to PCS policies, set by Conference.

PCS Conference has rejected the argument, put forward by some trade unions, that we cannot support concrete steps to end dependency on fossil fuels because this will put jobs at risk. Every single job can be and should be protected; every worker and every skill involved in the extraction of fossil fuels can be put to work building tomorrow’s carbon-free economy, with no loss of wages.

Different parts of the UK civil service will be on strike on days between 21^st and 24^th April. Student Loans Company, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and Ofgem will all be taking action. Shortly afterwards, on 28^th April, the entire UK civil service will have a further day of national strike action over pay, pensions, rights and jobs.

Our battle is linked to the battle being fought by climate change protesters outside Parliament. Our pay, our pensions, our redundancy rights and our jobs are under threat precisely so the government can avoid taxing or even moving to nationalise the energy behemoths and other corporations for whom profit depends on the continuation of pollutive practices and fossil fuels.

We are prohibited by law from striking over social and political issues – but our fight to force the government to pay up, to avoid us getting poorer, is a fight to be listened to, as working-class people. It is the same battle waged by climate change activists who want civil and public institutions that respond to popular pressure, not just to corporate lobbyists and the needs of the super-rich.

PCS policy is to demand the creation of a National Climate Service, as well as the nationalisation of the sectors involved in energy. Energy prices – and the profiteering of corporations involved at every level of energy production from extracting fossil fuels to the companies selling energy to homes – have been a crucial part of why inflation is so high, and why our wages should rise to match rising prices.

Joining the XR People’s Pickets, and other actions such as the trade union hub and bloc on the Saturday march, is an opportunity to build support for our demands as civil and public service workers.  Trade unionism is built on participatory democracy and linking with XRs citizens assemblies can help to shape the discussions for the fairer future we all want.

PCS members have a proud history of leading in the trade union movement on climate change and the environment. We’ve recognised that this is fundamentally a working-class issue as the action needed to address it, will not only impact many workers jobs, but is the same action needed to end poverty pay, poor working conditions, job insecurity and inequality which is inherent to the current fossil fuel economy. To get there, we need fighting, democratic trade unions banded together and willing to act decisively and in concert, to force the government to act – even when it doesn’t want to.

On Friday 14th April the Cabinet Office published it’s pay remit for 2023/4. The remit is the government’s way of telling departments what they can spend on pay each year. This year they have set a limit of 4.5% for pay increases plus a further discretionary 0.5%. Not only is this nowhere near last year’s claim – it does little to help hard working members meet the ever-increasing cost of living crisis.

PCS were informed of this limit by government officials who said the limit of 4.5%-5.0% was not negotiable and there would be no improvement on the 2022 pay rise of 2.0%.

What does this mean? Well, after nearly 6 months of a badly led pay campaign:-

• No negotiations on our 2022 pay claim of 10.0% – no improvement on the 2022 pay limit of 2.0% which was massively below inflation
• No negotiations on 2023 pay – imposition of 4.5-5.0% increase for 2023 which is less than half the rate of inflation.

The six-month strike mandate we secured on 7 November 2022 has nearly run out. We need to renew it. We need a massive Yes vote in the re-ballot currently taking place.

But renewing the mandate will not be enough to make the government take us seriously. We need a change of approach and a change of leadership.

Other unions launched their campaigns with programmes of national action. This paid off with the government forced to negotiate and make offers for 2023 and proposals for 2022 pay.

We don’t say the offers to these unions are good enough. In fact, they are likely to be rejected-as is the case with the nurses, where following a rank-and-file campaign the membership has said a resounding “no”! But the contrast is stark. These unions have put enough pressure on the government to make them negotiate. PCS hasn’t!

The current PCS leadership by adopting the approach put forward by the BLN secured a statutory strike mandate but waited six weeks before taking any action – and then only small-scale targeted strikes. They waited three months before the first day of national strike action. They have called only three one-day national strikes in six months.

From the start BLN supporters argued a clear strategy of immediate and escalating national strike action, supported by targeted selective strikes and a ballot for action short of strikes. We highlighted the need to coordinate action with other unions also fighting the cost-of-living crisis.

It is essential that this strategy is now implemented if we are to secure our 10% claim for 2022 and at least a cost-of-living proof increase for 2023.

Broad Left Network supporters reject the opportunistic rhetoric of Mark Serwotka and his Left Unity supporters on the PCS National Executive Committee. Serwotka has suggested that it is only as the result of our national campaign that the government entered into discussions. This is dishonest in three ways.

First – the discussions are the regular annually-scheduled discussions about the Treasury Pay Remit. They are not dispute resolution talks conceded in order to discuss terms for ending PCS strike action.

Second – the pay remit discussions do not touch on three of the four major issues raised – pensions, civil service compensation scheme or jobs.

Third – the talks are not intended to address an additional payment to cover our dispute over 2022-23 pay, but instead are designed to meet the government’s obligations for consultation on 2023-24 pay.

The General Secretary’s attempt to claim progress is to say the least premature.

Also erroneous are the claims being made in PCS propaganda, issued under the auspices of the National Executive, that there has been progress in Scotland.

Unelected negotiators have attempted to railroad through a deal with the Scottish Government for our devolved area members that falls shy of the 10% pay claim, without adequately explaining what it means for members’ pay packets. Further the proposed deal does not deal with our claim for adequate staffing in the Scottish civil service, nor with longstanding demands amongst Scottish members for a shorter contractual working week with no loss of pay.

Crucially, members in Scotland are currently being balloted on this deal, so claiming it as a union victory is as premature as it is dishonest. The Broad Left Network as well as SG West and Central Scotland branch are officially recommending rejection, against the cowardly official position to accept this wholly inadequate offer.

This Tory government is extremely weak and crisis-ridden – with serious and coordinated action we can defeat them!

On 20 April the union’s elections start. Ballot papers will be sent out by post. Use your vote to support Marion Lloyd for President and the Broad Left Network/Independent Left list of candidates.

Vote for a leadership that can win on pay and the other issues facing members.

The Broad Left Network supports the decision to re-ballot members to extend our current strike mandate which runs out on 6th May. The ballot starts on 20th March and will finish on 9th May.

It’s vital we get over the Tory  50% anti-union law threshold. It’s vital we get a massive Yes vote to continue the fight for our 2022  pay demand of 10% and to defend jobs .

After months of targeted action and two 1 day national strikes the government has not moved. No fresh offer has been made to increase our 2022 pay beyond the 2% government pay limit.

It’s a disgrace that the Tory  Government is prepared to turn its back on thousands of  its own employees forced into in-work poverty by its policies:-

• 40,000 civil servants use food banks
• 45,000 civil servants claim in-work benefits
• 49,000 DWP/HMRC workers are paid the minimum wage

The government is holding pay  talks with health and education unions. Their strikes have brought ministers to the negotiating table. But as Mark Serwotka is reported as saying “…they won’t talk to their own workforce..”

This government indifference to the cost of living crisis suffered by our members will only be overcome by stepping up the action, by increasing the pressure on the Tories. This requires  the urgent implementation of a programme of national action, sustained targeted strikes and, we would argue,  a ballot for action short of strikes such as overtime bans.

Yes we need to win the ballot to renew our industrial action mandate. We will work tirelessly to achieve this. But it cannot be just for more of the same. We need the union’s current leadership to articulate a strategy to win our 10% claim, to defend jobs , secure pension justice and protect the compensation scheme.

The government can be moved. We need to massively escalate the action!

PCS reps including BLN members and supporters worked tirelessly to win the mandate for strike action. We must use the massive mandate we  achieved to force the employer to give us what we deserve. The action must include a programme of all members strikes supported by targeted action 

We have now been joined by members in Revenue and Customs, Companies House and others – all of whom have now voted to join the campaign – a clear sign of members continued determination to win this dispute with the government on our 2022 pay and other issues.

The magnificent ballot success of Prospect which includes also a mandate for action short of strikes eg overtime ban means we can join with them in taking action. This  will strengthen our campaign. PCS does not currently have a mandate for action short of strikes . We believe this is a weakness in the union’s strategy that should be put right – the union leadership has an opportunity to do that in the next ballot.

The Broad Left Network fully supports the call to strike and march together on Budget Day. The day on which the government will be setting out their spending plans.

Our pay demands for 2022 are not yet settled, we want the money and we will not stand for further pay misery. This is the message that mass action on 15th March will send to the Tories – so all out on Budget Day.

        •       Over 130,000 PCS members voted  for strike action to force the government to pay us our 10% wage claim, stop job cuts, and give pensions justice.

        •       The pay cap imposed by the Tories is an insult. With inflation at over 10%, energy prices going through the roof and increased interest rates pushing up mortgage costs and rents we need more money in our wage packets. 

        •       We are not alone. Across the public service and the private sector too union members are demanding cost of living pay increases. Many of these unions are also calling strike action on 15th March including NEU, UCU, Prospect, BMA, HCSA, ASLEF & RMT on the tube, NUJ, GMB in Amazon.

We must make a stand now for decent wages, protection of jobs, offices and services. We have nothing to lose and much to gain.

Let’s make 15th March a day the Tories will not forget. Let’s make 15th March a stepping stone to a major escalation of our action on pay and jobs – of increased all-members action supported by targeted strikes. We need to make the government take us and our demands seriously.

Support the Budget Day strike. 

We can win – make the Tory Government pay up. All out on 15th March!

Supporters of the PCS Broad Left Network offer our deepest sympathy and solidarity to the family and friends of Brianna Ghey. Brianna Ghey was a 16 year old trans girl who was murdered in Warrington last weekend. In response, vigils have been called across the country to stand with the LGBT+ community. The PCS Broad Left Network urges our supporters to make every effort to support these vigils and the struggle for LGBT+ rights generally. Brianna was a much loved daughter, supported and cherished by her family. Like anyone, she wanted to live a life with the space and support to be her true self. Due to the UK government’s appalling U-turn on reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the absolute failure of our society to make space for trans people to live as their authentic selves, Brianna’s death will have to be recorded using her deadname and her death certificate will wrongly declare her to be male. This injustice demonstrates the erasure of Brianna’s young life, just one example of the erasure faced by all trans people who get married, live and die under a system which forcibly denies who they are. Now that she has died, the state – aided by reactionary elements in our society – will insist that she never truly existed as the wonderful young woman that she was. This erasure, propped up and deepened by the disgusting transphobic discourse ripping through the media at present, is the genocidal outcome of the anti-trans lobby.

That word is not used lightly; the Lemkin Institute for Genocidal Prevention describes the gender critical movement’s ideology and practice as having a “genocidal nature” in their 2022 report and call it a “centerpiece of right wing ascendency in the Western world”. The 1948 United Nations Convention on preventing genocide states in Article 2 that alongside the obvious definition of killing or harming members of a group, one definition can be “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction or in part.” While the Convention refers to “national, ethnical, racial or religious groups”, the parallels with the targeting of the very essence, existence and validity of trans people as a group as described in the Lemkin report are clear. A person’s trans identity is an inherent and inalienable part of who they are, and there is a growing voice in society urging us to deny that. We must reject it, and trans rights must be upheld and defended as an urgent matter of life and death.

Trans people, the LGBT+ community and their allies, can see that her murder is not simply an isolated incident. LGBT+ rights are under attack in a way that hasn’t been seen since the 1980s and the introduction by the Thatcher government of the hated Section 28. In reality, despite improvements amongst social attitudes and legal protections won because of the struggles of LGBT+ people to have their voices heard, trans people continue to face unrelenting hostility throughout their lives: in schools, on the streets, in the workplaces, and in wider society.

The newly-appointed Deputy Tory Chairman, Lee Anderson, has openly stated that their party will use a culture war-type agenda to sow division by attacking trans people in a bid to desperately try to cling to power. Disgracefully, much like their approach to striking workers, Keir Starmer’s Labour sit on their hands whilst trans people face attacks from the right and the far-right. Trans people also face specific barriers in accessing public services, such as access to mental health provision and gender reassignment services, because of the austerity policies of successive governments and councillors representing the mainstream capitalist parties. Hypocritically, some of so-called allies of trans people amongst these pro-austerity parties are the same politicians who have voted to introduce cut services, scrap or water down equality training including in the civil service, slash legal aid and introduce tribunal fees to deter access to justice. PCS members at conference have consistently voted to show their solidarity with our trans comrades by passing motions, often in spite of the recommendation of the Left Unity-dominated National Executive Committee, to unequivocally defend trans rights.

The PCS Broad Left Network is proud to demand justice for Brianna and her family and friends. The BLN recommits its pledge to stand with the LGBT+ community and against the austerity policies that fan the flames of division, hatred and discrimination in our society. We urge our supporters to join the vigils over the coming days ahead to demand justice.

The union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) met this afternoon, Tuesday 7^th February, to discuss the impact of the all-members national strike action taken by 100,000 PCS members on 1^st February. Rightly, the attitude of the NEC was positive, given the big turnout on pickets and demonstrations across the UK and union members’ clear support for a fightback on pay, on pensions, on redundancy rights and for many other improvements.

Fiona Brittle, BLN supporter elected to the union’s NEC, voted for further action to be called on 28^th February, 15^th March and 16^th March, all of which are dates where coordination with other unions is possible, including teachers’ and lecturers’ unions NEU, UCU, NASUWT and EIS. Coordinated action would seriously raise the pressure exerted on the government and has been under-developed by the current leadership of PCS.

However, it is not enough to simply call for further dates to be named. There must be a clear industrial plan, demonstrating the impact of well-supported strike action and this must be explained to members across the union, both those with mandates and those re-balloting. Fiona laid this out very clearly at the NEC, even while voting with other NEC members who had gone even further to name specific dates in April as well.

In addition to demanding proper exploratory work be done to extend coordinated action, and for a serious campaign of national strike action be announced no later than 16^th February, Fiona also renewed her demand that branches must be given access to members’ contact details.

Branches cannot contact members via the usual route of desk-dropping circulars or work emails because we need to talk about strike action. Home emails and phone numbers are essential, to reinforce attempts at mass engagement by our key activist layer in the branches.

This is certainly necessary as we approach the expiry of the union’s mandate, on 7^th May, 6 months after our ballot victory on November 7^th 2022; the nearer this gets the more thoughts should be turning to re-balloting, to including action short of strike action, and to making a serious case to members as to why they need to vote YES to help us win our demands.

The NEC majority, led by those who call themselves “Left Unity”, refused to support any of this, voting down all of the proposals made by Fiona to strengthen the national campaign, and opposing all dates for action except 15^th March. Broad Left Network supporters will throw themselves into building for March strike action, but we must also highlight to members the utter failure and calamity that has been the union’s current leadership during this dispute.

Keep pressure on the union’s Left Unity leadership

Our criticisms of the current leadership of PCS, Left Unity, are well-known by now. During the pandemic, they abandoned our national campaign on pay, pensions, redundancy rights and the rest, in favour of an offer for cosy fireside chats with senior Tory ministers.

While members were being forced back into unsafe offices, they failed totally to mobilise any serious resistance even though sporadic ballots over safety in Departments like DWP showed that there was enormous support in key workplaces for a militant attitude.

For the five years up until the most recent national ballot was launched, in September 2022, Left Unity supporters on the NEC made a point of principle out of opposing disaggregated ballots, where individual civil service employers would be balloted at the same time but on a department-by-department basis.

These so-called leaders spread rumours and scaremongered in order to witch-hunt out anyone who called for consideration of how disaggregated ballots could be used to break through the barrier of the 2016 anti-union laws, including the overall 50% participation threshold. This included the union’s then-Assistant General Secretary, Chris Baugh.

They said disaggregated ballots would “wreck the national campaign.”

Four years later, in 2022, they finally switched to a disaggregated ballot, which is how we arrived where we are now, with 100,000 members and 126 areas across the union with a live mandate on which we can finally take the action we need to win on pay, on pensions etc. There was no admission of failure, or of previous mistakes. They just chucked out everything they’d ever said up to that point and switched course.

With the most recent ballot, they failed to include action short of strike action as a question on the ballot. They claim this is a strategy, but the view of BLN supporters is that they are incompetent. They fail to understand that real socialist politics are not just a wish-list of nice things; it’s a way to understand how to make the union a vehicle for workers’ struggle.

Action short of strike action could have been used to frustrate the massive use of overtime to undermine strike action in the civil service. It could have been used to target even more intensively the key areas where targeted action has been authorised, with small number of members taking weeks upon weeks of action. It could have been used to stop employers moving work from one striking site to another, which is not striking.

These are just a selection of low points. Other failures, especially the dismal, centralising, anti-democratic, machinations of the current leadership are not hard to find.

BLN supporters – not just those elected to the NEC but those in branches and on regional and other committees – called on the NEC to launch a powerful national campaign right out of the gate, upon winning the mandate back on 7^th November. They refused.

Today we learned of a further consequence of that refusal.

The Left Unity majority on the NEC clearly forgot that Northern Ireland’s anti-union laws are slightly different. By failing to call action covering NI within 28 days of securing the mandate for action, the NEC allowed our mandate in the important areas, including the NI Home Office and NI Passport Office branches, to lapse.

Members in Northern Ireland, who won a mandate with 100,000 of the rest of us on 7^th November, must now be re-balloted or face exclusion from the national campaign. This shameful failure is the latest in a long list and proves that the current leadership must be replaced.

A fighting, socialist programme for the 2023 PCS elections

Reps and members from across many different civil service departments and the privatised, contracted-out areas, have long recognised that there are problems with the current leadership by the Left Unity faction, and these problems are getting worse. This is clearly shown just by the above brief historical recap of their failures since 2018.

Those of us who have served on Group Executive and National Executive Committees with this leadership know that reasoned argument has no effect upon them. Their rants, insults and screaming behaviour of some of their worst elements are well-known across the PCS activist layer. They are a serious barrier to our union’s victory and they must go.

The Broad Left Network was founded by PCS reps in order to put forward a plan for a campaigning, democratic union, governed by socialist policies. This year we will fight the 2023 elections in PCS on a stark programme, recognising that we are in the middle of a major dispute and that members are under enormous pressure, through the cost-of-living crisis:

• Support, build and lead the strikes across PCS.
• Develop a serious, escalating programme of national, targeted and selective strike action to beat the Tory cost-of-living squeeze and the anti-union laws, including action short of strikes to maximise pressure on the government, our employer.
• Ensure that PCS takes the lead in calling for mass coordinated action across the trade union movement.
• Strengthen democracy and accountability within PCS, including by extending elections to include full-time officers, and by bringing their pay more in line with the members they represent.

In the elections, Broad Left Network candidates will be standing alongside candidates from another organisation within PCS, the Independent Left.

Independent Left has agreed the above platform. This allows both sets of candidates to stand on one united, left slate. Such a move recognises how important it is to oust the charlatans clinging to control just now, and to replace them with a new generation of socialist, activist union reps who have the ideas and the ability to get out and build our union and its campaigns.

Nationally we are calling on all branches to support and nominate the following:

National President – Marion Lloyd (BEIS)

National Vice Presidents – Fiona Brittle (Scottish Government), Bryan Carlsen (HSE), Bev Laidlaw (DWP) and Jon-Paul Rosser (HMRC).

Ordinary NEC: Dave Bartlett (MOJ), Tom Bishell (DWP), Rob Bowers (Defence), Fiona Brittle (Scottish Government), Alex Brown (Health Group), Sarah Brown (Met Police), Bryan Carlsen (HSE), Josh Chown (Home Office), Eleanor Clarke (Cabinet Office), Victoria Cuckson (HMRC), Chris Day (National Archives), Alan Dennis (Defence), Nick Doyle (HMRC), Matt Exley (Culture), Chip Hamer (Culture), Rachel Heemskerk (DWP), Karen Johnson (DLUHC), David Jones (DLUHC), Bev Laidlaw (DWP), Marion Lloyd (BEIS), Chris Marks (DWP), Vijay Menezes-Jackson (DWP), Nick Parker (ACAS), Rob Ritchie (Shared Services Commercial Sector), Jon-Paul Rosser (HMRC), Dave Semple (DWP), Gary Spencer (DLUHC), Saorsa-Amatheia Tweedale (DWP), Paul Suter (DWP), Colin Young (Education).

Over 100,000 PCS members voted  for strike action to force the government to pay us our 10% wage claim, stop job cuts, attacks on redundancy and get pensions justice.

• As things stand a 2-3% pay increase is the limit imposed by the Tories. This makes no sense with inflation at way over 10%, energy prices going through the roof and increased interest rates pushing up mortgage costs.

• We are not alone. Across the public service and the private sector too, union members are demanding cost of living pay increases. Many of these unions are also calling strike action on 1st February including teachers in the NEU, train drivers in ASLEF and RMT and university workers in UCU. As well as the TUC calling a National Day of Protest on the same day to defend our right to strike

• So, we have a choice. Do nothing and get nothing. Or make a stand now for decent wages and protection of jobs, offices and services. We have nothing to lose and much to gain.

• Support 1st February strike. Let’s make it a day the Tories will not forget. Let’s make 1st February a stepping stone to a major escalation of our action on pay and jobs – of further national action supported by targeted strikes 

• We can win – make the fat cat, tax avoiding Tory Government pay up. ALL OUT on 1st February 

PCS members across the UK will take strike action on February 1st, in the first national strike action since the union gained a legal mandate on November 7th. All Broad Left Network supporters have been working hard since this was announced on 11th January to mobilise their branches and to link up with other striking unions – NEU, UCU and ASLEF.

Members are extremely angry with the government, and they support the goals of the campaign – particularly a 10% pay rise to undo the 10% pay cut imposed by rocketing inflation. Many are also angry with the leadership of the union for a litany of failures, in a rocky start to our industrial campaign but this should not be allowed to cut across a huge turnout on 1^st February.

A strong showing allows PCS members to link up with striking teachers, lecturers and train drivers, and mass pickets will allow for a discussion on tactics and what way forward to build the campaign. It will draw more members into an active role in the campaign than has hitherto been possible, thanks to NEC refusal of national action up to this point.

All branches should consider convening meetings of members to explain how strike action works, particularly as most areas have not organised strikes since large-scale homeworking came in. Zoom can be used for this. The other common pre-strike work, of identifying pickets, making sure members can ask questions and winning over doubters is under way.

Changing situation – a serious campaign means national action

On 16th January, the National Education Union (NEU) secured a decisive mandate for strike action and their executive has announced 7 days of strikes, a mixture of national all-members’ action and some geographical action, targeting specific locations, so that no member will lose more than 4 days’ pay. This bold approach is exactly what BLN has argued PCS should do.

Since November, BLN supporters have argued that national action would bring all members into the campaign in a very direct way, extremely important given that tens of thousands have not taken strike action since 2015. Targeted strikes, of smaller areas taken out for longer periods, could be used to supplement this – but cannot be used to replace it.

Members have played a heroic role, mobilising for targeted action in different areas – including Border Force, Highways Agency, Rural Payments Agency, DVSA and in small areas of the Department for Work and Pensions. Targeted action, like rolling action and other forms of action have a role to play. Yet they have been left isolated by the absence of national action, that could involve all PCS members and would unite the union behind our campaign.

Our opponents, a group called “Left Unity”, who currently have a majority on the union’s NEC, have replaced national action with targeted action. They would likely disagree with this assessment, but the facts speak for themselves. We are now three months into a six-month mandate and only now are we pivoting towards national strike action.

Branches and regions have been writing to the NEC, condemning how they’ve handled the dispute so far. Now, exposed by the audacious decision of the NEU executive, the PCS NEC majority feel pushed towards national action. BLN supporter Fiona Brittle, a current NEC member, has consistently argued that we need to expand this national action.

Some of these criticisms have not been shared with the NEC; paranoia and unaccountability seem increasingly common amongst certain NEC officers. All branches need to keep the pressure on the NEC for a programme of further national action which is absolutely necessary to win.  

Branch reps work hard to convince angry members

At all NEC meetings since the first post-ballot NEC on 10th November, the Left Unity majority of the NEC majority have launched attack after attack against BLN supporter Fiona Brittle, who has been the most consistent voice for national action. Meanwhile the genuine activists of the union have been working hard to retain the support of very angry members.

The absence of a mandate to take action short of strike action, including an overtime ban, has left many members asking why they should strike when the work will be covered by others on overtime. The NEC’s arrogant reply to this was that so long as it increases the cost of clearing the work, it is still worth going on strike. This is not good enough.

A re-ballot of those areas with a mandate could have been organised, as BLN supporters have suggested, at the NEC and other committees, to include a further question on action short of strike action. This could have been done in concert with the re-ballot of those areas which did not gain a mandate on 7th November, including large groups such as HMRC group. Instead, the NEC has defaulted to a laissez-faire “let us know if you want to do anything” attitude. This is simply not good enough.

We need to raise money to support selective strikes but the NEC’s incompetent job of explaining the launch of the union’s strike levy, agreed late last year, and which temporarily raises monthly subs by £3 or £5 (for members earning over £24,000 per year), has also been a source of frustration. This has been made worse by repeatedly incorrect emails sent to members since December about their subs.

Branch reps know that the NEC is not the union. PCS members are the union. This is our campaign, and we can win it. The NEC can be bent to the will of branches – but this requires re-building the tool that can accomplish that, a PCS Broad Left, bringing together all of the socialist activists in PCS to fight for a campaigning, democratic trade union.

We need a Broad Left, stretching the length and breadth of the union, speaking up for socialist politics, for the hard-working activists of the union and for members, to hold the NEC to account, regardless of who is elected to it.

Report from NEC on 18th and 19th January

The recent NEC involved extended discussion of the union’s industrial strategy. We do not intend to report publicly what the NEC has decided, because this could aid the employer. Fiona Brittle made it absolutely clear that she fully supports the decision to call national strike action on February 1^st. This is what Broad Left Network have been calling for since November and we will all do everything we can to make it a success.

However, Fiona raised significant concerns about the way targeted action is being handled by the current Left Unity leadership and called for further national action.

Serwotka and the NEC leadership did not propose further national action, only Fiona did. The NEC leadership did not address any of the organising issues raised by branches, including lack of access to members’ contact details. Instead, they rubbished any critique of the strategy as “posturing”. They refused to accept that the implementation of the levy was poorly handled, insisting that the NEC “must make difficult decisions”.

The NEC leadership have repeatedly hidden behind members difficult financial circumstances, arguing that the cowardice of the NEC is justified because members cannot afford to take national action. This disgraceful argument makes mockery of the sacrifice of nurses, posties, railway workers and others who have taken substantial unpaid strike action, and of the teachers who are about to. This is how we can defy and beat a government intent on destroying the public sector, and how we defeat their allies in the private sector.

Lack of confidence in members’ desire for all-out action is indicative both of what the PCS leadership really think about the capacity of workers to win against bosses, and of how little they understand the current mood and needs of members.

Fiona proposed amendments which remedied all the NEC’s failures. She also proposed:

• a proper analysis (including costings) of the impact of targeted action undertaken so far, both industrially and in forcing the government to return to negotiations,
• detailed analysis for any new targeted action, in order to assess whether this would be effective in moving Ministers towards putting money on the table,
• a special NEC immediately after the Feb 1st strike to assess the impact of the strike and to call substantial national action, with the General Secretary – as is his role – tasked with identifying dates of high impact and possible coordination with other unions,
• reballots to add action short of strike to our mandate,
• a campaign of education and agitation around the new anti-union laws,
• insistence that pressure be put on Scottish Ministers to bring concrete proposals to the current talks on Scottish Sector pay, and a deadline imposed.
• including Scottish MSPs and Welsh Members of Senedd (MS) in the union’s e-action as part of publicity for the 1st February strike.

All of Fiona’s proposals, including those which are uncontentious, were voted down by the Left Unity majority on the NEC, amidst highly personal comments about how Fiona was “undermining the campaign” by daring to put forward an alternative view about how to fight and win. During a live ballot mandate, engaging with debate and discussion on strategy is not “disunity. Wide debate builds confidence in our approach and builds unity amongst members.

The Broad Left Network stands against the personal abuse which has for many years been a common technique of Left Unity in PCS. They are not socialists and so they do not have a political understanding of the battle we are in, or why only mass opposition to the government will win that battle. Personal abuse is the last refuge of those bereft of ideas.

PCS Broad Left Network supporters will be opposing the Left Unity leadership in the union’s 2023 elections – it is time for them to go. Our immediate priority, however, must be to strengthen the union’s national campaign and make 1st February a massive success as a step toward the programme of further national action that is required to force the government to meet our demands.