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On 4 June, the union’s newly elected National Executive Committee (NEC) met for the first time. Following the May 2024 elections, the union has a changed political composition; a new left majority has been established, with 19 out of 35 seats won by PCS Broad Left Network (BLN). PCS Independent Left (IL) and left independents.

At Tuesday’s NEC meeting, the defeated group that has been leading the union, and which still retains the post of General Secretary and President, showed exactly what it intends to do to undemocratically keep hold of power in the union.

Even before the meeting, the Left Unity minority was hard at work to block any kind of change. They refused to put the union’s national campaign, or the battle to defend recently sacked union reps, on to the agenda in the first place, and refused to produce a written paper on either one. This would have immediately given effect to motions A315 and A323, passed by the union’s Annual Delegate Conference, which met in Brighton from 21 to 23 May and arguably the issues that concern members the most.

Once the meeting convened, the General Secretary bent to pressure and pledged to give a verbal report on the rep sackings – although thanks to manoeuvres by the President and a refusal to reorder a heavy agenda, this was never delivered. At the time of writing, the NEC still has not received a report on the sacked reps from the General Secretary.

President attempts to keep power through bureaucracy

The first item of business addressed by the union’s new President, Martin Cavanagh, was the proposal by him to continue with a set of “Standing Orders” (the rules governing how the NEC functions) which were put in place by the outgoing Left Unity leadership. These proposals were intended to protect the already substantial power of the National President and designed to make it as hard as possible for the new left majority to progress the issues that most concerned reps and members.

The newly elected left majority had submitted substantial amendments to these proposals to ensure the new NEC could govern effectively and take forward the programme it was elected to progress.

Cavanagh’s proposals were voted down and the amended proposals were agreed. However, the new President ruled that these were not passed because they required a two-thirds majority. The President immediately suspended the meeting and attempted to dismiss the NEC on the grounds that it did not have any standing orders.

This kind of Presidential obstruction of the work of the majority has not been seen since the right-wing led our predecessor union in CPSA and so many of us worked so hard to defeat – culminating with the election of Mark Serwotka in the Year 2000.

Broad Left Network supporters proposed that, instead of suspending the meeting, the meeting be adjourned for one hour. When the meeting re-convened just after midday, the left majority deliberately but unwillingly voted for Cavanagh’s undemocratic standing orders in order to prevent the indefinite suspension of the NEC that the President had threatened and in order to progress the key issues for members.

Important business was on the agenda, including the union’s political strategy and the belatedly-promised verbal report on the sacked PCS reps, and while Cavanagh and Left Unity are willing to play games with the business and needs of our members, BLN and our allies are not.

Left counterproposals defeated attempts by the President to assign a majority in all important sub-committees to Left Unity members, who no longer form part of the elected working majority. This included the Policy and Resources Committee, Organising and Education Committee, the Finance Committee, the Campaign Committee and the UK Civil Service Bargaining Committee, despite his slate of candidates having suffered defeat in the national elections. This was one high point of a difficult meeting that, thanks to Left Unity obstructionist tactics, yielded little that will benefit union members. The subcommittees now reflect the democratic mandate given by the membership. We must now make sure they meet quickly.

Some steps forward on political strategy

The PCS intervention in the General Election is vital and as such the political strategy was dealt with at the tail end of the meeting. The President immediately decided to use a President’s ruling to throw the two most substantive motions on political strategy off the agenda without debate or vote.

One of these motions was proposed by Broad Left Network supporters and is reproduced below. It sought to use the General Election as a springboard to re-launch the union’s national campaign on pay, pensions, jobs and rights at work.

High-profile demands on Labour, as part of a conscious strategy of mobilising members would be coupled with consultation with senior lay reps in PCS and with the 64 areas which won a strike mandate in May about taking industrial action during the general election to make our members’ needs into an issue in the campaign.

As part of wide-scale mobilisation, branches would be permitted to hold all-members’ meetings to discuss whether they wished to endorse anti-austerity parliamentary candidates – such as Jeremy Corbyn, long standing ally of our union’s members – in their constituencies.

With the motion thrown off the agenda by the President, this could not even be debated. Once the President as chair of the meeting makes a ruling, it requires a two thirds majority to overturn it – evidently, these should be used sparingly and only in the most serious of situations, not for deciding that motions from NEC members can’t be heard because they disagree with the paper put forward by the General Secretary.

Instead, the General Secretary read out her NEC paper on political strategy, which did not amount to much more than a “Make Your Vote Count” approach, used by the union prior to 2017. The third motion left remaining motion on the agenda was passed, and this succeeded in demanding that the General Secretary must write to the Labour leadership to firmly place on record the demands recorded in Motion A12, passed by Conference 2024, which mostly relate to the union’s national campaign in the civil service.

It is clear that Left Unity, despite losing the national elections, feels comfortable attempting to block the majority from accomplishing the programme that they published to members, even if in the process they flagrantly disregard PCS Conference policy.

Our answer must be the building of a massive united left across PCS, to build a fighting, democratic union, with a genuinely socialist leadership that abandons the defensiveness and obfuscation of PCS Left Unity and gets out among members and reps to mobilise for a serious national campaign. If you agree with this, we urge you to join PCS Broad Left Network, and to write to us at pcsblnetwork@gmail.com to invite BLN supporters from the union’s National Executive Committee to speak at your branch.

Below was the motion BLN attempted to propose to and discuss with the union’s NEC and which the President unilaterally threw off the agenda.

Motion on General Election Strategy for NEC 6 June 2024

The NEC recalls the motions passed by Annual Delegate Conference in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022, as well as the motion proposed by the previous NEC, 2023-2024, to ADC 2024, which was not debated. Under the authority granted by motions A304 and A305 in 2017, the NEC agreed to proposals from branches to back 91 Labour candidates in the June 2017 General Election.

Conference 2019 authorised the NEC to “prepare guidance for branches and members in line with existing policy should a general election be called before May 2020”. Under this instruction, the NEC took a decision in September 2019 that they supported the Labour Party in England and Wales, would urge a vote to “Get the Tories out” in Scotland and would adopt a “Make Your Vote Count” approach in Northern Ireland. In both the 2017 and the 2019 elections, Jeremy Corbyn led Labour on a transformative manifesto.

Since 2019, Conference has not repudiated either the ability of branches to apply to the NEC in order to support candidates for election in particular constituencies, or the ability of the National Executive Committee to take a decision on political strategy affecting the whole of the UK. A motion was proposed by the 2023/24 NEC to Conference 2024 to do just this, to eliminate the ability of branches to seek support for individual candidates, but it was not debated.

The NEC asserts that the calling of a UK General Election, to take place on 4 July, raises fundamental questions about our industrial and political strategy in the next few months.

A Labour government is the most likely outcome of the pending General Election – but this is not an excuse to demobilise the union’s campaign. It is grounds to step up these campaigns. We must put emphatic support behind those Parliamentary candidates who support our members and their legitimate demands and needs. The NEC must take steps to mobilise members, to demonstrate clearly our intention to fight, and must place clear demands on the likely incoming Starmer-led Labour government, as per motion A12, passed by ADC 2024.

This NEC decides as follows:

• Noting his decades of support for workers’ rights, for pay justice and national bargaining in the civil service, for the full funding of public services, for an end to the scourge of privatisation, for the nationalisation of energy, railways and the post office and for his opposition to racism and oppression domestically and internationally, from South Africa to Palestine, the Public and Commercial Services union endorses Jeremy Corbyn as the candidate for parliament in Islington North. The General Secretary will notify Mr Corbyn’s campaign and will work to identify ways in which the campaign can by supported by PCS nationally as well as by any groups, branches, reps and members who wish to participate, within the bounds of any constraints imposed by law. These will be subject to approval by the Senior Officers Committee.

• Instructs the General Secretary to write to the Rt Hon. Sir Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party to seek urgent discussion and public commitments around the clear political demands raised in motion A12 of ADC 2024 and on the following points additionally, which are all consistent with the policies passed by PCS Conference since austerity began:
  • The need for an urgent pay rise of 10% in the civil service, and for a minimum wage in the public sector and amongst privatised staff on government contracts of £15 per hour, with appropriate additions for London, to address the pay crisis facing civil servants, workers in associated bodies and privatised workers on national government contracts across the UK, and to finally end once and for all the ridiculous situation where our skilled AA and AO grade staff are reduced to earning the National Minimum Wage each year.
  • Pay and pensions justice and reversal of the massive attack on our rights – including through the 2016 and 2023 anti-trade union laws – implemented by Con-Dem and Tory governments over more than a decade that has seen pay fall in real terms, has seen cuts to sick leave, to annual leave, to union rights, to job protections and attempted cuts to redundancy terms. As part of a fair settlement, we reiterate our campaign demand for a reduction in the working week without loss of pay, already being achieved in Scotland, to be extended to UK and other devolved civil servants, to government workers in associated bodies and to commercial sector workers on government contracts.
  • Repudiation of the Tory plan to cut 72,000 civil service jobs, and for politicians to make a public commitment to 100,000 new civil service jobs, including as part of the creation of a National Climate Service, in line with longstanding PCS policy, entailing genuine negotiation with the civil service trade unions covering workload protections, uses of AI, maximising flexibility for civil servants in respect of hybrid working and defence of and investment in our office estate.
     

• That the NEC appoints a team to meet with the Labour leadership, should the Labour leadership seek a face-to-face meeting, with appropriate non-voting support from amongst the FTO cadre as identified by the General Secretary.

• Instructs the General Secretary to communicate the above demands to the Labour leadership by the end of the day on 7 June 2024. The deadline for a response from the Labour leadership is set as 20 June 2024. The response – or lack of response – will be published to members. The message to members must be agreed by the delegation appointed to meet the Labour leadership.

• Reaffirms the right of branches to propose support for candidates in any parliamentary constituency in their geographical footprint to a branch EGM, where those candidates are positively identified as publicly supporting the minimum demands outlined above, where they are not in breach of PCS policy on equality including support for Trans rights, and where they have an established record of campaigning on these issues. Such proposals should be forwarded to the NEC via the General Secretary for final approval.

• The General Secretary will prepare and publish guidance by 10 June to explain how branches can apply to the NEC for permission to support candidates, to ensure civil servants do not fall foul of the pre-election period impartiality rules, to ensure civil servants do not use any facilities granted by the various employers to convene these meetings and to make all reps and members aware of what activities they can legitimately undertake in order to support union-backed candidates in the General Election. The NEC delegates the Senior Officers Committee to agree the final list of candidates endorsed by PCS.

• Asserts that industrial strategy and political strategy must go hand in hand in this period. Even whilst we take steps on our political strategy, we must also ready ourselves to renew our industrial campaign should a pro-austerity government, committed to following through planned Tory cuts in the civil service and related areas be elected. A Senior Lay Reps Forum is summoned for w/c 10 June to lay out the NEC’s political strategy, the major pressure being placed on Labour, the likely approach should Labour attempt to implement Tory cuts, and to take views from each area on the mood, organisational readiness and likely needs of each area regarding a potential pivot to action and/or a re-ballot, as appropriate.

• Instructs the UK Civil Service Bargaining Committee to oversee meetings with those areas that won a mandate in May 2024, to discuss their views and members’ views on the potential for invoking that mandate, especially on days where other unions are likely to be taking strike action, such as the BMA Junior Doctors.

Annual Delegate Conference (ADC) met in Brighton from the afternoon of Tuesday 21 May until 1pm on Thursday 23 May.

Conference met a mere six days after the union’s national strike ballot results were declared and eleven days after results were declared in one of the most important National Executive Committee (NEC) elections in the union’s history. In the 2024 elections, the 20+ year tenure of PCS Left Unity as the majority on the NEC was ended by a coalition of left forces including the Broad Left Network, the Independent Left and independents in Revenue and Customs Group.

One hand tied behind our back: the PCS national campaign under Left Unity

Controversy has raged within PCS since November 2022, when the union won a strike mandate covering 100,000 civil servants on questions of pay, pensions, a jobs guarantee, and the terms of the civil service compensation scheme. This ballot success came after years of ballots falling short of the 50% participation threshold since 2018.

Given the unprecedented circumstances, including a cost-of-living crisis in which inflation had exceeded 10% and a major upsurge in strike action, decisive action was called to unite all PCS members with a mandate, and to plant firmly in members’ minds that their union had a serious strategy to fight a decade of pay cuts.

The leadership of the union, particularly then-President Fran Heathcote and then-Deputy President Martin Cavanagh, failed to do this. They dithered for six weeks before calling any kind of strike action, and for three months before calling national strike action, wasting more than half of the six month mandate won in the ballot.

This dithering led directly to narrow misses in the May 2023 re-ballot; Tory anti-union laws require 50% participation to make any ballot valid, and under the anti-union laws, each mandate expires after six months. A layer of members was not convinced by the lacklustre approach of the PCS leadership under Heathcote and Cavanagh.

A full report on ADC 2023 can be read on the BLN website; the assembled delegates representing the heart of PCS democracy ordered that the campaign continue and proceed to a re-ballot in those areas that missed in Spring 2023. These instructions could not have been clearer – yet the NEC blatantly disregarded them, reflecting the degeneration of Left Unity, once a broad organisation that brought together the vast majority of the left across the union, now sadly declined.

When the government wrote to PCS on 2June 2023 to offer a one-off, non-consolidated, pro-rata payment of £1,500, with no requirement that the union halt the campaign, the union’s leadership under Heathcote, Cavanagh and the Left Unity majority on the National Executive Committee decided to terminate the campaign.

They cancelled the outstanding strike action in those areas which still had a mandate, they cancelled the re-ballots ordered by Conference 2023 and they cancelled the strike levy – after all the effort reps had spent ahead of its implementation in February 2023 trying to reassure members that an extra £3/£5 monthly charge was needed.

Instead of escalating and re-doubling our efforts when the government blinked, the leadership of the union surrendered – and then compounding the error by doing absolutely nothing for ten months under the delusion that a handful of meetings with the Cabinet Office once our mandate had safely lapsed would lead to any meaningful progress on absolutely anything union members care about.

Spring 2024: the re-ballot

From June 2023 until March 2024, the national leadership did very little except campaign for Fran Heathcote to be elected as General Secretary, which she duly was – with overwhelming support from the union’s institutional machinery – by a narrow 800-vote majority over united left candidate Marion Lloyd.

As April 2024 and the union’s NEC elections drew closer, the Left Unity leadership opted for a strategy they have used before, of launching a strike ballot to coincide with national elections, again hoping to use the machine of the union to name check Martin Cavanagh, who stood to take Heathcote’s now-vacated post as National President.

So poorly prepared for this pivot back to a ballot, after ten months of doing nothing, that in the first week of the ballot in March 2024, reps didn’t even have leaflets to give to members. No serious strategy was put forward except to argue for more targeted action without being able to show how this had had an impact in 2023.

National strike action was expressly ruled out for anything except propaganda purposes. NEC members from the Left Unity cabal have openly argued that members cannot afford national action and wouldn’t support it. This contradicts the views on which Left Unity was founded that for a national campaign united national action was and is essential to victory.

Reps mobilised the union. Days on days were spent out leafleting workplaces, holding meetings, drafting member-facing emails, doing everything possible to get out the vote. Every BLN and IL leaflet handed out said “Vote for Marion Lloyd” and right beside it, “Vote YES” for strike action. No such approach was adopted by Cavanagh et al.

Around 20,000 members secured mandates for action – including in Culture Sector areas, which did very well. More than 120,000 members did not secure a mandate because they fell below the 50% participation threshold. Conference met at the right moment to decide what to do next.

A314 v A315: Left Unity dishonesty defeated by a fighting strategy

Further miscalculations followed, on the part of the Heathcote/Cavanagh-led Left Unity leadership. The ballot closed at noon on Monday 13 May, yet the General Secretary, the President, and the Vice Presidents – all LU supporters – chose to delay the publication of the results until Wednesday afternoon.

This cynical and undemocratic move restricted the ability of branches to move emergency motions. However, once the ballot result was published, we were able to get some emergency motions through in supportive branches calling for a massive campaign and laying out key next steps.

Fundamental to the new approach is the widening of the campaign. All of the issues previously included should remain included – something a Civil Service World article on the conference did not quite grasp, in its fawning coverage of Heathcote’s contributions in the rancorous debate – including pay, pensions, jobs, the civil service compensation scheme and terms and conditions.

To these the NEC can now add additional demands: implement genuine hybrid working, a halt to office closures unless agreed with the unions, recruit 100,000 new civil servants including for a new National Climate Service, and “reversal of the anti-union attacks since 2010”, including attacks on facility time, on the Civil Service Jobs Protocols and the implementation of Civil Service Reform terms which cut sick leave.

Now that an election has been announced for 4th July we need to determine how our political and industrial strategies should be linked . We need to discuss how to use the existing strike mandates won for 20,000 members. We need to agree when and on what basis we re-ballot the 100,000 members who we don’t at present have a strike mandate for. We must employ political pressure, especially in this election period – including putting  our campaign demands to the Labour leadership, All are now on the table. We also have the option of a dispute over the attack on civil service equality networks.

We will work with our left allies on the NEC to identify a serious and practicable way to develop the national campaign that LU have so mismanaged in their time in charge.

Equality – major defeat for LU

One of the centrepieces of PCS conference every year is the moving of the Organising Strategy. This document symbolised the defeat of the old Reamsbottom-era right wing leadership of PCS, as it moved the union away from a “servicing” model of offering cheaper car and holiday insurance to members and towards an “organising” model based on giving power to the reps and members in every workplace.

Reps and members do not feel powerful. They have been subjected to dismal and dispiriting pom-pom waving by the leadership of the union instead of reasoned, serious debate. When ballots have not achieved the 50% threshold, they have been roundly blamed by that same condescending LU leadership. They are routinely misled about the state of the union by a leadership that bleats about overall “activist numbers” rising when the number that matters is rep numbers, and this has been falling.

Reps know very well that the civil service has rapidly increased in size since 2016, while the union has not, meaning overall density has fallen, and they have been waiting since 2018 for a slightly less triumphalist, slightly more serious approach from what has until now been the dominant faction within PCS, Left Unity.

The card vote that defeated – for the first time ever – the Left Unity NEC’s Organising Strategy at Conference this year proves that a significant number have absolutely had enough and want the union to abandon gimmicky approaches and do the basics: back reps – within training, with legal advice, with bargaining support and with the confidence of the leadership of the union – to win things that make the union worth joining, and ask people to join it. We agree.

Leadership Defeated on Equality Rights

The Left Unity leadership could only muster one speaker on the conference floor to promote their divisive gender critical views – a speaker who had been given full remit to promote her views in an official PCS blog reducing female identity solely related to our reproductive organs and totally undermining and attacking trans and non-binary rights. This view jars with women who have been fighting for decades against being reduced solely to our bodily parts rather than being treated as individuals.  Conference allowed these divisive views to be put in democratic debate and dealt with them by overwhelmingly voting for motions A317 and A52

After a raft of conference defeats Left Unity hastily changed the NEC attitude on A317 from remit/oppose to support with statement -although the NEC speaker continued to deliver the same old gender critical opposition and presenting equality as competing rights. ADC delegates rightly recognised that we need to fight to defend equality rights of all our members however many or few they are. An injury to one is an injury to all and BLN will continue to stand up to defend all members facing oppression, discrimination, or attack.

Left Unity NEC censured again.

The nadir of the once-dominant Left Unity leadership, now deprived of their majority on the National Executive Committee by the 2024 elections, was reduced to supporting a censure motion against itself, moved by Scottish Government branches.

The NEC, ignoring Fiona Brittle, a Broad Left Network supporter and the only member of Scottish Government PCS on the union’s 2023-24 National Executive Committee, agreed to a Heathcote proposal to dissolve PCS Scottish Government’s elected Group Executive Committee without any kind of consultation with reps or members. When challenged, the NEC leadership claimed that emails had gone out asking for views…although during Scottish school holidays of course! 

The anti-democratic side of Left Unity was further on display during the conference however, particularly over the question of political strategy. An NEC motion, that essentially abolished the union’s political strategy in the middle of a General Election, was to be moved on Tuesday afternoon. This was overtaken by the massive debate on pay and the national campaign.

The Standing Orders Committee (LU-led but usually with a certain grumpy kind of common sense), no doubt after consultation with the President, as required under rule, decided to propose moving the political strategy motion to the guillotine section and abandoning a guillotine section entirely.

It will not have escaped notice of Conference veterans that the guillotine section in 2023 was where Heathcote’s dishonest attempt to filibuster a pro-trans rights conference motion was exposed and where the Conference delivered a stinging rebuke to the 2022-23 NEC by overturning their attack on a lone trans rep who had voted her conscience at TUC Conference and against Heathcote et al.

Some delegates were a tad wary about that decision – but political strategy was considered sufficiently important. In the end even this delayed debate on political strategy was dodged by Martin Cavanagh in his role as chair of Conference on the final Thursday.

The General Election had been called on the Wednesday, Chris Stephens MP, chair of the PCS Parliamentary Group had just that Thursday morning given his report to the conference on the work he has done for members over the last year…and the NEC reply was going to an NEC motion abolishing  the unions political strategy and barred PCS from supporting any political candidate regardless of how supportive they had been of our pay claim, our members’ jobs and so on?

Cavanagh’s relaxed chairing saw the entire section talked out, avoiding the absolute pasting the Left Unity majority on the outgoing 2023-24 NEC had set itself up for.

Support for Sacked HMRC Reps

Unanimous support and a standing ovation from conference was given to our victimised HMRC Benton Park View union reps, sacked for union activities. By carrying motion A355 conference supported the call for “a union-wide campaign to secure the reinstatement of the victimised reps.” This will be a priority for the incoming Executive.

Lay democracy 1, Left Unity 0.

Conference 2024 was a resounding victory for lay democracy in PCS. The patience of reps, which had stretched at Conference 2023 to endorsing an attempt by the Heathcote/Cavanagh-led NEC to water down the principle of all-member annual elections, finally snapped – and not before time.

The pledge of the Broad Left Network supporters elected to the National Executive Committee for 2024-25 is that we will work hard to build a serious campaign, we will work hard to re-open the union to lay control, we will work hard to ensure the full weight of the union is put behind members and reps.

We want you to be part of that fight. If you stand for a socialist-led, fighting, democratic PCS, then we want you to join the PCS Broad Left Network.

As noted on the PCS website, the National Museums Liverpool (NML) strike has been suspended from 28 May until 2 June, at the request of the Branch Executive Committee, while union members vote on an improved offer from the employer in respect of the one-off, non-consolidated, pro-rata £1,500 that the government authorised employers to pay in June 2023, and which NML refused to pay.

Determined and brave action by PCS NML members has forced further concessions from their employer. After 8 weeks of all-out strike action in spring 2024, National Museums Liverpool offered £750. Strikers remained determined and further strike action, together with plans for further escalation, have eventually wrangled an offer which includes £1,200, two days’ extra leave a year and other small gains.

Newly elected left Deputy and Vice Presidents of PCS, Bev Laidlaw, Dave Semple and Hector Wesley now form a voting majority alongside left Assistant General Secretary John Moloney on the union’s National Disputes Committee, which was asked by the PCS NML branch late on Friday afternoon for authority to suspend the strike action.

The new left majority on the National Disputes Committee was in constant touch with the PCS NML branch on Friday and did not agree to the suspension lightly, but a further letter to the NDC late on Friday night put forward very strongly the views of the NML branch committee members that the suspension was necessary.

Given the poor quality of the briefing received by the National Disputes Committee from internally within the national union and despite consistent support locally, from both full time and lay reps there are still questions to be asked about how effectively the national union has supported the local branch, in the period prior to the new left National Executive Committee taking office on 23 May. Under the new leadership, each and every dispute will be given the support and resources required to put members in the best place to win.

There are also questions to be asked about the extent to which the National Disputes Committee has been reduced to a rubber stamp over the last six years by General Secretary Fran Heathcote and President Martin Cavanagh. Their faction, PCS Left Unity, lost the May 2024 PCS elections and then went on to lose massively at Annual Delegate Conference in 2024, both in terms of watching their key motions defeated by angry delegates and in the elections held at Conference by branch block vote each year.

Supporters of the PCS Broad Left Network in Liverpool and beyond have been in regular attendance at NML picket lines and strike meetings.

BLN supporters Dave Semple and Fiona Brittle, respectively newly elected PCS Vice President and re-elected PCS NEC member, joined newly elected Deputy President Bev Laidlaw at Saturday’s NML strike rally at the Ship and Mitre in Liverpool. They pledged that, whatever the decision of PCS members at NML in respect of the revised offer from the employer, the new left majority on the union’s National Executive Committee would continue to support them,whether in continuing the fight for £1,500 or as part of the union’s reinvigorated national campaign for an immediate minimum wage of £15 per hour and for rectification of many other injustices suffered by civil servants and workers in privatised and associated bodies.

“Thank you to all those who campaigned and voted for the candidates standing for change in the PCS National Elections. The result demonstrates the desire for change, the desire for a serious fight on the issues that matter most to our members right across our union. This is reflected right across the results including those standing for change who have been elected but also those who so narrowly missed out. This team of serious fighters now have a majority on our NEC.

We have had a tremendous campaign, and members have voted for the industrial and political programme that is needed to win for our members, as we near the end of this brutal Tory Government and prepare for Starmer’s Blairite New Labour. This is a vote to change the direction of our union – to return to the fighting culture and history that must be recaptured in PCS. I am proud to have stood to be your National President and I’m delighted to be elected back on to the NEC.

We will continue to represent members and fight for their rights and interests. Our election material headlined with the need for members to vote yes in the industrial action vote and we hope that when those ballot results are announced next Tuesday, they give a mandate for action. We will then argue in our union’s conference in 10 days’ time for the militant strike strategy that can win. Please get your votes in for our candidates in the group elections and join the Broad Left Network.” #ActionNotWords

Marion Lloyd

At its meeting on 5th March the DWP Group Executive Left Unity majority refused to discuss a motion from Broad Left Network (BLN) members in support of DWP security guards employed by G4S.

The motion was based on an official announcement from the GMB union which said “1000 job centre security guards to vote on strike action – 70% of the workers employed by G4S are only on minimum wage.” The motion called for a message of solidarity and for PCS to take a proactive approach to support fellow trade union members and increase the pressure on G4S to address the disgraceful low pay of the security guards we work with in our offices.

The DWP Group President and prominent Left Unity member, refused to publish the motion, saying the meeting was called to discuss GEC motions for the DWP Group Conference in May and that in his view the motion was inaccurate as the “GMB haven’t formally confirmed…” the ballot. Come back to the next GEC in April supporters of the motion were told!

The thought of actually doing something positive petrifies this ineffective Left Unity leadership in DWP. They look for any excuse to do nothing. The bare minimum of sending solidarity to other workers preparing to struggle over pay is too much for them. Their solution as always is to kick the can down the road. They failed to recognise the huge industrial leverage that this relatively small number of GMB members have. They have the power to shut down the vast majority of the 100s of DWP offices which would not be safe to open without the security guards.  G4S struggles to provide cover for just normal absences and jobcentres are frequently closed because of this. We should be doing everything we can to ensure that senior DWP management recognise the impact of G4S refusing to increase their workers’ pay and keeping so many vital workers on minimum wage levels. And help bring this pressure to bear on G4S too. We will do everything we can to ensure our fellow trade unionists win a decent pay rise. 

As the Left Unity leadership is unwilling to do anything we call on all PCS activists in the DWP to talk to our local security guards to show our full support and offer solidarity in their fight for a pay rise and make sure they are union members. We can also raise the issue with DWP management at district and regional/nation level and the prospect of our offices being closed if the guards go on strike.  So that we can help exert pressure through the DWP onto G4S and help our fellow workers.

This is just another example of why we need to change this ineffective leadership and would urge everyone to help the Broad Left Network campaign to get the vote out for our joint slates of candidates for the PCS National Executive Committee NEC Elections 2024 and the DWP Group Executive Committee elections in April. Group Elections 2024

Here is the motion submitted by BLN members on the DWP GEC –

The GEC notes that 1000 DWP Security Guards are being balloted by GMB for strike action on pay against a background of 70% being on the minimum wage.

The GEC extends support to these workers and agrees to send a message of solidarity.

The GEC instructs the Group Officers to organise a national briefing for reps to explain the background to the dispute, and if possible, to invite a GMB speaker with knowledge of the dispute so that reps can ask questions, and can use this information to show support from PCS to the G4S security guards in branch workplaces. The briefing should also include advice on what non-members of any union and PCS members in G4S security roles should do, so that reps can support the dispute. The GEC officers are further instructed to approach the relevant National Negotiating Committee in GMB, through appropriate channels in both PCS and GMB, to see what other support can be provided.

Negotiators must: –

• Demand of the department that all Jobcentres be closed to the public on strike days on grounds of safety. The number of business continuity incidents reported to close sites indicates G4S already struggles to cover normal absences of the guards.
• Expand existing PCS H&S advice about the necessity to close or partially close Jobcentres to the public if the full security guard resource identified in the JCFRA is not present, to include guidance on what to do if the security guards call strike action. 
• Include guidance on steps to take if management do not respond to the need to close Jobcentres when security guards strike action is called.
• Publicise a clear process to urgently escalate concerns
• Ensure that members can invoke their rights on serious and imminent danger and not work in a jobcentre without security guards under regulation 8 of The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and Section 44 ERA 1996. 
• Produce guidance for the back of house sites too where many of the safety control measures in the site risk assessment are reliant on security guards being present. These sites should also be closed if there is a risk to the safety of our members.

As PCS elections begin Left Unity, the increasingly discredited leadership of PCS, resorts to lies in a desperate attempt to divert attention from its failings – most significantly the handling of the national campaign which it “paused” (ended) last year when more could have been won by stepping up the action.

Arising out of a recent NEC meeting they claim that “BLN Calls for Labour Party Affiliation”. This is a lie and they know it. The Broad Left Network is opposed to Labour Party affiliation and supports the PCS agreed political strategy of only supporting candidates who agree with our union policies.

It is Left Unity which has a record of unconditional support for Labour, when at the last general election, it called for support for all Labour Party candidates including those who had backed austerity measures.

The truth is that at the last NEC meeting a BLN member expressed a personal view that the union should affiliate to Labour believing this would help turn it back into a workers’ party. This is not the agreed BLN policy. However, the BLN is an open and democratic organisation made up of activists from all parts of the union who are committed to the core principles of BLN such as on union democracy and equality.

The BLN recognises the right of individual members and groups to hold and express different views so long as they do not conflict with its core principles and values. The question of Labour Party affiliation is an example of this.

Unlike Left Unity, the BLN does not weaponise differences and attack its own members for having differences. The BLN is however, totally united on fighting for: –

   -a democratic union

   -a union run by its members

   – a campaigning union committed to restoring real term pay levels which have been driven down under the leadership of Left Unity.

The BLN is not interested in stunts and deceit. We leave that to Left Unity. We are serious about the action needed to restore members faith and pride in our union and are fighting the 2024 union elections on this basis.

The National Executive Committee (NEC) of PCS met last week to consider next steps in the union’s national campaign on pay, pensions, jobs and redundancy rights. This includes all members who are part of the pay arrangements imposed by the UK government and specifically excludes those in the Scottish Sector and those in the Commercial Sector.

Broad Left Network supporters elected to the union’s NEC continued to put forward the need for a serious national campaign, and not the pretences and half measures put forward by new General Secretary Fran Heathcote and acting national president Martin Cavanagh.

Heathcote and Cavanagh, and their Left Unity cabal who currently hold a majority on the National Executive, spent from June 2023 until September 2023 doing everything in their power to demobilise and dismantle the national campaign.

They cancelled strikes, they cancelled strike re-ballots, they cancelled the union’s strike levy, which had built up a reserve of money to use on targeted strike action. At every NEC meeting from September until last week, they did nothing to move forward the national campaign.

Adding insult to injury, they hid behind an all-members ballot organised last year, arguing that “members had endorsed the NEC strategy”. In order to get this endorsement, the NEC majority blatantly lied to members, telling them that a “yes” vote continued the campaign.

Last week’s NEC proves that there has been no campaign for the last nine months, and that a new campaign must be built from scratch.

Where are we on pay?

New research shows that the position on pay is truly terrible. Inflation – i.e. the percentage rise in prices – has been in the news for two years now, because by any measure, prices have risen by around 20% in the last two years. Every pound we are paid is worth a fifth less.

Interestingly, the rise in prices over the last two years only accounts for about half of the pay erosion civil servants have had to endure since 2010. The other half is made up of inflation from 2010-2022, the pay freezes and 1% caps to pay rises in that period.

Using the standard method by which trade unions calculate how much would be needed to undo pay austerity since 2010, the average pay rise we actually need is 32.9%. This will be different depending on grade and department, each of which has been hit slightly differently.

On June 5^th 2023, having received an offer of a one-time, non-pensionable, pro-rata payment of £1,500, which was to be added to the 4.5-5% average pay rise published in March 2023, the NEC decided that this was enough to justify cancelling the national campaign.

For most PCS members, and for most civil servants, even added together (which is inadvisable since the £1,500 is a one-off) this did not exceed 10%. The new research throws into sharp relief just how weak the NEC have been, in conceding 2023 pay at that point.

This is to say nothing of the other issues on which no progress has been made – on our pensions in particular, where we are overpaying out contributions by 2% of salary each year, and on jobs, where the government have announced 66,000 job cuts.

What does BLN call for?

In the aftermath of the pause in the campaign forced by the NEC majority in June, which we voted to oppose and which went against PCS Conference policy – conference had ordered re-ballots to proceed – we called for the national campaign to be reinstated immediately.

Nine months of a gap in any kind of serious activity means we are essentially back where we started in September 2022, at the time when we launched our first post-pandemic national strike ballot. We must rebuild the campaign from the ground up.

We must reiterate the demand, agreed by ADC 2022, of a 10% pay rise, and add to this a demand for a framework to progressively undo the erosion of our rates of pay since 2010. We must explain this to members and prepare them for a serious fight.

Pay cannot be the only issue on which we build a dispute. It is not the only issue we face.

Cancellation of the 66,000 job cuts, a no-compulsory redundancy guarantee, improvement of the CS Jobs Protocols, workload safeguards, a national collective agreement enshrining hybrid working rights, reinstitution of legacy pension rights and restitution of our over-payments and opposition to office closures must all feature.

We support the launching of a consultative ballot, although we think the NEC’s decision is less to do with seriously building a campaign than with the NEC majority being able to pose, during branch AGM season, as having done something meaningful since June.

This is obvious. The NEC met and agreed this on 14^th, with the consultative ballot to be launched on 20^th February. No time was allowed for branches and groups to confer, to consult members, or even for a senior lay rep forum to ask questions of the new approach.

Instead, the NEC have opted for their usual approach of a stage-managed Facebook Live event organised for 19 February, featuring the acting (unelected) national president, to boost his profile ahead of the April elections.

Union organising: the serious BLN approach vs. opportunistic electioneering by LU

It would have been far more sensible to hold meetings across the union centred around concrete demands – on 10% now, on pay restoration etc. – to mobilise members and raise pressure on the Cabinet Office as we head into negotiations on the national pay remit.

Prepared for with emails and leaflets and noticeboard posters, this would have a secondary effect of raising the profile of the campaign, which tends to result in people joining the union because they want to be involved. This approach, together with placing demands on those who have aspirations to govern, given we are in a General Election year will not only increase pressure on the employer, but new activists may also be won.

It would have given time for groups to consider how pressure could also be brought to bear on the major issues resulting from the under-resourcing and under-staffing across the civil service and related bargaining areas as part of the national campaign.

A consultative or even statutory ballot could then be launched in March, coinciding with the decisive part of any talks with the Cabinet Office on the civil service-wide pay remit, and with any announcement being used to fuel the vote in the ballot itself.

Actively going out to members in this way – rather than a digital ballot being launched with no preparation and no agitational materials to use in discussion with members – would also allow reps to field questions about a renewed strike levy.

We support a strike levy. This is not an issue of principle, but of tactics – we will resort to whatever tactics will win with the least pain for members and it is clear that the strike levy can raise a lot of money. So long as members’ confidence is retained, it is broadly supported.

What is still missing, however, is any serious analysis of the targeted strike wave that ran from December 2022 until June 2023.

We are fighting a national dispute on pay and the other issues – this requires national strike action. It is not an accident that national action has been used in every other major national industrial dispute over the last two years, from teachers and lecturers to posties and railways.

The NEC are sowing illusions amongst ordinary members of the union if they pretend that the scale of victory required can be won purely by fully paid, selective strike action.

No doubt paid, selective action has a role to play – but without any serious analysis of the impact of our previous strike action, and government mitigation measures, the NEC cannot explain to members what level of sacrifice will be required.

From the outset then, the NEC are setting reps up, as we will be unable to answer basic questions that any serious-minded member would reasonably ask. This reduces the electronic consultative ballot they have announced to a shallow propaganda exercise that allows for certain people to use the machinery of the union in their election efforts.

BLN does not treat union organising in so cavalier a fashion.

Nevertheless, vote YES

Whatever our objections to the incompetence of the NEC majority, their repeated dishonesty around the national campaign and the electoral opportunism of choosing to launch a consultative ballot without due preparation, we must nevertheless vote yes in the ballot – actually being called a survey!

• YES to the 2024/5 pay demands even though we believe they should spell out in clear terms what it is they are demanding in terms of pay restoration.
• YES to taking strike action to achieve the demands even though we believe they should make clear to members what their strike strategy is.
• YES to contributing to a strike levy to support targeted action even though we believe national all-members action must be a major part of our strike strategy.

We understand the union’s pay claim has already been submitted and notice given to the employer of a dispute! This raises the question of what purpose this survey serves. It also makes it necessary we say yes to the demands and action – notwithstanding our concerns. Imagine the farcical position we will be in as a union if the Left Unity NEC, having prejudged the outcome of their own survey, has to withdraw the claim through lack of support!

BLN reps across PCS will be organising in their branches to turn out a yes vote; the bigger the vote, the more the pressure on the NEC to do something more concrete, and of course the more the pressure on the government at an important moment during the pay talks cycle.

This is not enough on its own however. Through their inaction during the pandemic, through their weak tactics in the strike wave of 2022/23, through their eagerness to call off the dispute at the first concession from the government, the current leadership prove that they must go.

We urge all reps to nominate, support and campaign for a change in the leadership of PCS – including Marion Lloyd for President and all the Broad Left Network supported candidates, in alliance with the Independent Left and other independent candidates in the forthcoming NEC elections in April are ready to seriously lead our union.

The DWP GEC called a Zoom meeting 10th January to discuss problems of staffing and work pressures. There was plenty of talk but absolutely no proposals put forward for doing anything about the situation.

Martin Cavanagh (group president) opened the meeting, which he described as part of a process of engagement. He said last year the GEC asked members to comment on the staffing situation etc. The common theme of the responses was the effect of the staffing crisis on members’ health, mental wellbeing, work pressures and the service to claimants. The response from members justified the union’s demand for an extra 30,000 staff.

The responses formed a 57-page dossier which had been put to departmental management and politicians. Senior management refused a request to discuss the dossier and no meeting with departmental officials is expected until 19 February.

Martin Cavanagh said where do we go from here?  His answer was to call members meetings and ask members what they are prepared to do. He said we are “at the cusp of rising to the challenge” and then went on to list all the difficulties of doing anything which involves industrial action.

The BLN is not opposed to members’ meetings. On the contrary we want to involve members in a serious staffing campaign. But a leadership doesn’t wait to be told what to do – it puts proposals to members covering the demands we are making; it outlines a strategy for securing these demands and seeks members support.

At a Group Executive meeting before Christmas BLN supporters put forward a staffing campaign strategy. The Left Unity group leadership refused to accept it for discussion – the strategy we proposed is reproduced at the end of this article. Left Unity had no strategy of their own then, and they still do not have a strategy now.

No proposals of any kind were put to the Zoom meeting – a wasted opportunity. They have no proposals to put to members’ meetings. This a leadership of All Talk and No Action.

Motion on Group “Protect DWP staff and claimants” campaign

The Group Executive Committee (GEC) notes the dossier submitted to DWP, outlining the concerns expressed by PCS members in DWP group about the impact of inadequate staffing to the health and wellbeing of DWP staff, as well as to the quality of the service provided, and to the health of those relying upon DWP services.

While the response in the press and in Parliament has been favourable, if muted, comments by Stephen Timms, MP and chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, and by other MPs indicate that they are sufficiently concerned to ask questions of ministers in Parliamentary committee meetings, not sufficiently to urgently call for major new recruitment to DWP.

In fact, the GEC notes, the government’s official plan is to reduce the headcount of the UK civil service by 66,000 by 2030. National negotiators at Cabinet Office level are far too complacent, believing that the impending 2024 General Election means these plans will never see the light of day. This is delusional, given Rachel Reeves’ plans to limit tax and spending if Labour take power.

The GEC further notes that the most recent publicly available figures suggest that Departmental staffing has fallen by more than 4,000 full time equivalents in the 18 months from April 2022 (81,228) to October 2023 (77,163). There has been no corresponding fall in workloads, and DWP senior leaders argument that they are recruiting is simply insufficient to fill the gaps.

The GEC therefore instructs group officers as follows:

• That agitational material be prepared for and distributed to all DWP offices, targeted to the key work areas in each office, and using where appropriate anonymised material gathered for the dossier, to emphasise the need for staff, the impact to claimants of too few staff and the need for a serious campaign on staffing and workloads.
• That this material links recruitment issues to low pay, especially AOs who will once again be earning minimum wage this April.
• That dedicated material also be produced addressing the concerns of all managerial grades – especially EO and HEO Team Leaders –who are also being failed by the current staffing problems, including extensive open ended use of TDA instead of opportunities for substantive internal promotion, urging them to join the union and to join the PCS staffing campaign.
• That group officers draw up and present for scrutiny and review by a GEC in January 2024 a detailed campaign plan that moves the group towards opening a legitimate trade dispute with DWP over staffing, and which takes account any information we have about the timescales of the pending national re-ballot on pay, pensions, redundancy rights and a compulsory redundancy guarantee.
• This strategy should also include avenues to build further media pressure and clear political demands to be placed on the Labour Party, in line with PCS group and annual delegate conferences, to eliminate sanctions, to improve frontline services to all claimants and to eliminate discrimination against and improve support for disabled claimants.
• That any Group Officer who addresses the rearranged all-members on 10^th January focuses upon the slowness of DWP’s response to our legitimate concerns, the need for a vigorous campaign, and the reality that forcing such a change will likely require strike action, that our leverage in such action is greater in a General Election year, and lays out the steps the Group Officers are taking to prepare sufficient resources to mount and win such a campaign.
• That contact with organisations representing DWP claimants is made in advance of any ballot on staffing, to discuss how claimants’ organisations might support such a ballot, and how we might coordinate messaging, public activity such as media work, political pressure, protests and other methods to maximise the profile of the campaign.