PCS Broad Left Network

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.

As there are such longstanding and ongoing staffing issues in DWP with clear policy carried at our Group Conference in 2022 covering the need to launch a serious campaign to address this, shockingly 18 months on we are still at the very early stages of the GEC even considering doing anything to address the immense pressure on our members.

This pressure has only increased since 2022. Despite continual recruitment the DWP struggles to even maintain staffing at a steady level and this actually went down by 4000 full time equivalents between April 2022 and October 2023.  It is not surprising that AO staff in particular have left in droves with pay so low that the minimum wage overtook the derisory pay for this grade earlier this year and is set to do the same next year.  Overall we have lost 20,000 AOs since 2014 and this is causing phenomenal pressure in key jobs delivering the complex benefit system.  The GEC has also not reported any attempts to implement the Group policies on addressing the grading of certain  AO work. Even a slight increase in the overall numbers of EO grade staff in the same period has not relieved any pressure as many “new recruits” are existing members going for promotion.  And there has also been a huge increase in work created for EOs, so any extra staff in this grade make no dent in the immense workload pressures.

Our BLN members elected onto the GEC will keep pressing the GEC leadership to build a serious campaign on staffing. There can be no doubt about the ever-worsening workload pressures on our members, we have clear policy demanding 30,000 extra staff carried in 2022 and even management actions show they recognise it is impossible to deliver services with the staffing levels we currently have, judging by the constant application of mitigations in how we deliver work and movement of staff and work around the DWP.

On top of this we face a Tory onslaught demanding further cuts to civil service staffing and no relief from opposition parties who are committing to remain within Tory spending limits which we must challenge as a union.

What is needed is a clear lead being given by the group leadership with a plan for action in how we translate the pressure on our members into a concrete dispute we can win.

We submitted a motion to help aid this debate at the emergency GEC called on 21/12/23. Although the meeting did discuss the staffing campaign, the group leadership refused to take the motion at this meeting or address the key tasks that need to be urgently done to build a strong campaign on staffing. 

This is the text of the motion we submitted which you can discuss in branches and work with us to build the fight back on staffing along with all the attacks on our members.  

Contact the BLN if you want a speaker at your AGM on how we can build a fighting union with a fighting DWP Group leadership to tackle all the challenges ahead.

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.

Since the invasion by the Israeli armed forces on 27 October, the situation for civilians in the Gaza Strip has sharply deteriorated.

At least 22,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces, including over 7,000 children, and this figure is likely too low; thousands more are listed as missing and organisations including the Gaza Health Ministry have cited major difficulties posed by the siege and hostilities in rendering medical aid to casualties and identifying the number of dead.

In addition to being cut off from basic supplies including food and electricity, civilians have been subjected to countless IDF air strikes, including those confirmed by the United Nations on schools and hospitals.

The longer this situation persists, disrupting aid to Palestinian civilians, the more people will die – and it is significant that the families of those Israelis kidnapped by Hamas marched on the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, on 13 December to demand that their government get back to the negotiating table. It is ever more apparent that bombing will not rescue the kidnapped.

Major UK demonstrations for peace continue

Around the world, millions of working class people have erupted into anger at the murderous actions of the Israeli state, provoking demonstrations. The vast majority have no sympathy with Hamas, but are outraged by the killings and destruction of communities in Gaza and understand that – contrary to the views of warmongers like Netanyahu – Hamas cannot be beaten by armed force any more than the US could ultimately defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In the UK in many cities and on almost every weekend since the invasion, there have been major demonstrations, many joined by UK-born Palestinians and the families of those who live in Gaza, who have tried to get their families out, or who have not been able to contact their families. Broad Left Network (BLN) supporters in PCS have supported all of these.

At a recent demonstration in London, PCS members asked union reps what else their union can do to force an end to the conflict, and to support members with family caught up in the crisis.

The political power of these demonstrations cannot be underestimated. Netanyahu himself has publicly spoken about the need to reverse their impact. A massive backlash as the horrors of the invasion were exposed, aided by the demonstrations in putting forward the clear demand for a ceasefire helped secure a truce from 23 November until 1 December.

Most unions, including PCS, have published statements calling for an end to hostilities, and leaders have spoken on major demonstrations to call for the same. Unions in general can and should go much further, however, to mobilise the power of labour to force an end to the conflict, particularly given the role of PCS as the largest trade union in the UK Civil Service.

Build mass opposition to the conflict

Several PCS branches and groups have been proactive in encouraging union members to join weekly demonstrations in London, called under the auspices of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. This is a good first step to building support for the demands for a ceasefire and a wider political settlement that would allow for a sustained peace, and could be widened to other parts of the UK.

It is with surprise, therefore, that supporters of the BLN on the PCS National Executive Committee found themselves outvoted by the majority of the union’s NEC on exactly this question. The NEC majority under President (now also General Secretary-elect Fran Heathcote) voted against a proposal by Asst General Secretary John Moloney to work to broaden out these demos across the UK.

The union’s NEC met on 6/7 December. In their deliberations, the majority Democracy Alliance grouping opposed further regional demonstrations, opposed a donation to the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) appeal to support international unions’ efforts to get medical supplies and food in to Gaza.

Democracy Alliance members of the PCS National Executive further opposed a proposal to hold a national lunch time online meeting to publicise the union’s position on the Gaza conflict. This national meeting was intended to have a Palestine Solidarity Campaign speaker, to help people understand what has been going on and what they can do to help force an end to the invasion.

At the NEC meeting, the question of a small number of resignations from the union over the Gaza statement was raised as a reason not to do more for Gaza.

Branch reps who work alongside BLN supporters in building the union have told us that a very small number of resignation letters have been received denouncing the union for “supporting Hamas”, which is simply not true.

Overall we believe the number to be several dozen. Any time the union takes a strong position on questions that matter to workers, a small number of people will not like it and will prefer to resign from the union to engaging with the union’s democratic processes, including members’ meetings that have been called by branches to discuss participation in demonstrations etc.

This is not a reason to shrink from a robust defence of the lives of Palestinians facing the destruction of their homes, communities and lives.

We call on the union’s NEC to reverse their position, to agree the donation to the ITF appeal, to agree to organise workplace and city or town based demonstrations in concert with other arms of the labour movement and national campaign organisations such as Stop the War Coalition, to call for a ceasefire, and to organise a national PCS meeting to explain the union’s position and what members can do, with a speaker from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Our union, in particular, must be more proactive in ensuring that civil servants are protected from the government’s attempts to politicise civil service workplaces by projecting the Israeli flag on to buildings, and from any activity which may be in breach of UK or international law, including having any role in the transfer of weapons to a state that is clearly attacking civilians.

Much more than this, we need to work across the entire labour movement to increase the numbers on demonstrations, to call for a ceasefire and an enduring solution that permanently ends the siege of Gaza, for mass struggle of Palestinians for liberation, for international links to be built with the Israeli and Palestinian working class and trade unions, and for an independent socialist Palestine.

Trade unions, the largest membership-based organisations in the UK, and representatives of the “sleeping superpower”, the working class, have a crucial role to play in this, and should name the day for a national day of action – following the example of school and college students – for workers to unite on the streets in protest at our government standing by while Gazans are slaughtered.

This requires national coordination across all trade unions, especially given the propensity of senior ministers in government to talk in extreme terms about banning demonstrations and using force against demonstrators. PCS could take this up with the UK Trade Union Congress (TUC). The defence of any group of workers in the UK who strike to block arms to Israel must also be raised.

Escalate political opposition to the war

We also need an organised political opposition to the Israeli armed offensive, including opposition to the UK supplying arms to Israel, and in favour of the provision of humanitarian aid to all those who need it. Keir Starmer’s early adoption of a pro-Israeli stance that ignored breaches of international and humanitarian law shows clearly that the Labour leadership are unwilling to play this role.

The result has been dozens of elected councillors resigning from the Labour Party in protest at the failure of the leadership to prioritise the lives of Palestinians over Starmer’s continued posture of total submission to the foreign policy imperatives of the USA, the biggest foreign backer of the Israeli invasion, which vetoed a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire.

Trade unions could convene an open meeting under a “Stop the War” umbrella, drawing together all socialist political forces, including MPs and councillors who have called for solidarity with Palestine and who oppose the invasion, to organise political opposition, to raise the profile of and pressure exerted by those calling for peace, including defence of workers who act to halt arms exports.

Civil servants are politically impartial, we serve the government of the day, but we are also citizens, and recognise that our own safety and security lies in international working class solidarity. We put no trust in the government to have our interests at heart, and will fight through our unions for a just and lasting peace and against the profiteering war machines of any nation.

On Thursday 14 December, the results in the PCS General Secretary and Assistant General Secretary elections were published. Candidate of the bureaucracy Fran Heathcote scraped a win as General Secretary with 10,340 (5.94% of total voters or 51.5% of votes cast compared to 9,557 for Marion Lloyd, the Broad Left Network’s candidate for General Secretary.

In very welcome news, left Assistant General Secretary, incumbent John Moloney, decisively defeated unelected union full time officer Paul O’Connor, 11,705 votes to 8,152. John is one of the leaders of PCS Independent Left, who campaigned hard alongside PCS Broad Left Network to secure a leadership that will reinvigorate the union’s national campaigns and lay democracy.

Hundreds of left activists and reps across the union mobilised to secure branch nominations, with Marion and John securing 80 and 87 branch nominations, accounting for more than 55,000 members, about 5,000 more than Heathcote. Work then began on leafleting, desk dropping, emailing and speaking face to face with tens of thousands of members across PCS.

Despite a very narrow loss in the General Secretary race, this work has firmly laid a basis for the growth of the left in PCS. 

As we move into the year of a UK General Election year, a wave of attacks on pay, jobs and terms and conditions is all but inevitable, with Labour prioritising credibility in front of financial markets and the bosses, to securing gains for workers, especially in the public sector. Resisting these attacks requires a capable, combative leadership with a strategy that can win.

Our work in the last few years, in strike ballot after strike ballot, on pickets and now in union elections is bringing it home to members that Broad Left Network activists can be that leadership.

This will be a tough hill to climb, given how many of our members are very angry with the union; 4,000 fewer of whom voted in these elections than in 2019 because they are losing faith that things can change, and thousands of whom are leaving PCS thanks to incompetent national leadership. Nevertheless, as the last four years have demonstrated, we are in this to win.

What a difference four years makes

Four years ago in 2019, the picture looked different. Previous General Secretary Mark Serwotka had acted with a cabal inside a united group inside PCS Left Unity to undermine and oust elected left Assistant General Secretary Chris Baugh. Serwotka then won the battle for branch nominations and went on to win re-election against two other candidates, including Marion.

In the space of four years, the Broad Left Network has been founded and grown dramatically, securing seats on the union’s National Executive every year since, as well as seats on multiple group executive committees. Hundreds have joined BLN to fight for union democracy and for campaigns that will defeat the attacks raining down on us from the bosses.

Four years ago, IL stood against Chris Baugh for AGS and against Marion Lloyd for General Secretary. This year, on the basis of a principled alliance in the elections that put forward a united programme of union democracy and renewal of our union’s national campaign, IL and BLN were able to come together behind John and Marion for AGS and GS, and a united slate in 2023 NEC elections.

This bodes well for a realignment of the left in PCS.

Ruling “Left Unity” group is a hollow shell

Events during the GS and AGS election demonstrate the extent to which PCS Left Unity, once a powerful organising tool for socialists in the union, has become merely a vehicle for elections, propped up by the union’s machinery to promote candidates who won’t disrupt the increasing power of unelected full time officers who think they know best and who eschew accountability to members.

In Revenue and Customs group, the second largest employer-based bargaining unit in PCS, scores of Left Unity members have now resigned in protest at the lack of support for their group, and at the complacent and ineffective ways that Left Unity operates. More can be read elsewhere on this website and in the statement these reps published, which many BLN supporters also signed.

Others in HMRC, not themselves part of the initial tranche of reps resigning from PCS Left Unity, have also made very public their break with the ruling faction. Amongst these were Tracy Hylton and Hector Wesley, among the longest serving and most recognisable Black activists in the union, the latter being deputy president of the Revenue and Customs group and National Executive

During the 2023 GS and AGS elections, the Socialist Workers Party also split from the ruling Left Unity faction, after five years of their most high profile supporters giving loyal and uncritical support to the ruling faction. 

There are many reasons for the recent splits and resignations from LU but undoubtedly the most prominent is the pitiful leadership of the 2022/23 PCS strike wave, which took over a month to launch after the strike mandate was won in November 2022, and then promptly called off after the government offered a one-time, non-consolidated, pro-rata payment of £1,500 to civil servants instead of a proper pay offer.

As Left Unity increasingly becomes a vehicle for their supporters (and friends of the ruling cabal) to get jobs in PCS, separating themselves from the ordinary members of the union, so does its actual capacity to run an effective union diminish. Letting the Tories off the hook over our pay, pensions, and jobs in 2023 has been the clearest example of that yet – and inevitably more will follow.

Rebuild the Left in PCS – BLN Conference meets on 20 January 2024

BLN supporters are not letting grass grow under our feet. The elected steering committee has taken early decisions about contacting all groups opposed to Left Unity to discuss a united programme – of reasserting union democracy and rebuilding our national campaign – that could form the basis for a united slate in forthcoming April 2024 national and group elections in PCS.

This will be further discussed and voted upon at the BLN Conference on 20 January. This Conference will discuss and vote on the full programme in the form of motions on key topics like pay, pensions, jobs, office closures, terms and conditions like hybrid working and matters of international importance to the labour movement such as the Gaza invasion.

BLN supporters will then take this programme to their PCS branch Annual General Meetings in February and March to seek endorsement from members for these motions to be put forward to Group Conferences for each employer (DWP, HMRC, Home Office, Commercial sector etc) and to the union’s Annual Delegate Conference.

A fighting, democratic union with socialist policies is and remains the lodestone of the Broad Left Network, and we urge you to get involved by joining (which you can do online!), to attend the BLN conference, adding your voice to ours as we fight to build a union that is willing and able to protect our members in the workplace and which can win decisively on pay, pensions, jobs and rights.

Trans Day of Remembrance – Heledd Muir-McCann

(Pronounced /Hel-leth Myoor muh-Can/ or /ˈhɛleːð mjuːr məˈkan/)

Trans Day of Remembrance was started in 1999 by Gwendolyn Ann Smith to honour Rita Hester, a trans woman murdered the year prior. Each year on the 20^th November, vigils are held to remember the trans and non-binary people lost to murder or suicide. The list grows ever longer, with around 320 more added in 2023. These are only the deaths we are aware of. The people on this list illustrate a worrying trend, in which violence against our community has been rising and trans people of colour are especially affected; 94% of the names belonged to trans women or trans-feminine people, most of which were black. This is consistent with a stark rise in transgender hate crimes reported in England and Wales over the past decade. Both of these figures are only the ones that get reported, with many more going unrecorded.

It is a stressful time to live as a trans person, with even UN experts voicing their concern; independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity Victor Madrigal-Borloz visited the UK in May. In his statement, he remarked on the “toxic nature of the public debate surrounding sexual orientation and gender identity” was in part cultivated by “abusive rhetoric by politicians, the media and social commentators has trickled down to produce increasingly abusive and hateful speech against LGBT persons.”
We are not free of this discrimination in PCS either – Mark Serwotka has publicly announced his support for his wife’s organisation Women’s Place UK, a transphobic organisation that opposes the right for people to self-identify their legal gender without medical approval (already approved in 20 countries). Our leadership in the NEC has received censure at both 2019 and 2023 Annual Conference for its conduct relating to trans and wider LGBTQ+ issues; in a vote regarding removing PCS Proud of their semi-autonomous status, the NEC delayed the process with an unnecessary card vote, but over 70,000 votes opposed their motion. Most notorious were the antics surrounding Motion A50 in this year’s annual conference. A50 addressed the refusal of the NEC to accept PCS Proud’s nomination of a delegate for the TUC LGBT+ Committee. It was revealed the president of Left Unity had privately insisted her supporters filibuster a prior debate to stop others from being discussed, this motion included; despite these tactics, the motion managed to be discussed and was passed decisively.

To begin tackling the tragedy and injustice highlighted inTrans Day of Remembrance, we must have leadership in our union that is firmly behind all LGBTQ+ rights as they should be all other demographics of worker.

Many of us fear things shall only get worse, but I am certain in my belief that if the trans community and our allies keep making a concerted effort to resist the people and institutions facilitating this hateful environment, the future will begin to look brighter. The violence and healthcare crisisthat has taken so many lives will one day evaporate, and trans and gender diverse people will one day live without fear of violence. The list and all 320 additions this year serve as a stark reminder of our necessity to believe a better future is possible.

The PCS Broad Left Network stands in solidarity with all those marching and protesting both in the UK and globally, against the barbaric military assault by the Israeli Government against the Palestinians in Gaza and the increasing threat of a land invasion. 

The Israeli state has been carrying out unprecedented levels of airstrikes on the densely populated Gaza Strip ever since the appalling Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians. Nearly 7,000 are reported to have been killed so far, a third of whom are children. Over half the 2½ million population has been displaced. 

We condemn the Tory government for their support for the Israeli state’s war on Gaza, which is a murderous collective punishment of poor Palestinians for the attack by Hamas on October 7th, including the horrific killing of Israeli civilians. The likes of Sunak, Biden and the rest of Western capitalist imperialism would have us believe that this crisis started that day with these terrible events, ignoring decades of brutal Israeli state repression and occupation. 

Disgracefully, this vicious bombardment on Gaza has been backed by Starmer’s New Labour. Outrageously, its representatives who join demonstrations against the attack on Gaza have been threatened with disciplinary action. This is a far cry from when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader. Under his leadership, the Labour Manifesto for the last general election in 2019 committed an incoming government to “immediately suspend the sale of arms to Israel for arms used in violation of the human rights of Palestinian civilians”. It would also strive to “secure justice and accountability for breaches of human rights”, listing, as an example, “the illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip”. And it also promised that “a Labour government will immediately recognise the state of Palestine”. 

The many PCS members who have been marching against the slaughter in Gaza, particularly those with friends and relatives living in Gaza, would expect PCS to take the lead in the mobilisation of the trade union movement against this war. 

The unions should seek to build massive union blocs on the anti-war demonstrations. Our members increasingly understand that a Tory government of the rich, that has inflicted the cost of living squeeze on our incomes and is bringing yet more anti-union legislation to restrict our right to strike, is on the opposite class divide to us, both at home and abroad. 

PCS members will also be disgusted at Starmer’s slavish support for the international interests of imperialism and big business and will want the union to base its political strategy on backing only those politicians who support our policies and members, including on the picket lines. 

BLN believes that the whole union movement should act collectively to ensure that any workers who refuse to manufacture, transport armaments, or supply related services to Israel for the purpose of attacking the Palestinian people are defended from victimisation by their employer. This includes any PCS members. 

Marion Lloyd said: “This is a brutal attack on Gaza, one of the poorest areas of the world by a military power supported by the Western capitalist governments. But the Palestinians have a friend in the millions of ordinary people all over the world, many of whom are on the streets demonstrating. We in the BLN stand in solidarity against this brutal assault and for the national, political and economic liberation of the Palestinian people. As a socialist and internationalist, I support the common struggle of working people, both here, in the Middle East and globally, for a present and future free from war, oppression, want and exploitation.”

Marion Lloyd, Broad Left Network supporter and the candidate of the left in the forthcoming PCS General Secretary election, has secured 80 nominations. John Moloney, Independent Left supporter and the left’s candidate for PCS Assistant General Secretary, has secured a whopping 87 nominations.

Published yesterday, these figures demonstrate the huge support for Marion, for John and for a fighting, democratic PCS. Breakthroughs across the union – but particularly in Revenue and Customs Group – now mean Marion’s election and John’s re-election are a step closer.

Current PCS national president Fran Heathcote, who arrogantly assumed she would be crowned General Secretary, and in whose interest outgoing General Secretary tried to stitch up this year’s Annual Delegate Conference, secured 90 nominations.

This is a far cry from the 170 nominations that she boasted she would receive when the campaign began. Marion Lloyd has run an energetic and outward facing campaign, speaking to the concerns of ordinary members, and along the way defeating Heathcote in every branch where the two spoke.

Both Marion and John are standing on a platform of only taking their civil service wage – rejecting the current General Secretary wage of £103,100 and repaying the difference between the two into the PCS campaign fund.

Heathcote, on the other hand, could not make up her mind whether she was intending to take the full General Secretary salary. Asked about this at two separate hustings, she has been unable to give a clear answer.

Marion’s election platform is very straightforward. She has consistently argued that a determined PCS national campaign could do a lot better than the £1,500 non-consolidated, one-time payment extracted from the government in June, just before the NEC cancelled the entire campaign.

Added to the question of pay, in order to build the strongest campaign possible, must also be tied questions such as opposing the 66,000 job cuts announced by the Tory government, and defending civil service offices and local services across the UK – on which Heathcote has been abysmal.

In a significant boost to the Broad Left Network/Independent Left campaign, John Moloney secured 87 nominations, beating his opponent Paul O’Connor’s tally of 84. O’Connor, long-serving unelected PCS full time officer, bragged that Broad Left Network was “a busted flush” earlier this year.

All eyes now turn to efforts to get out the maximum vote. On a high turnout, it is absolutely clear that Marion and John will decisively win the General Secretary election. We urge all branches to draw up plans now for ensuring every member votes when the election begins on 9November.

Vote Marion Lloyd and John Moloney – candidates for change

Tory Party conference closed on 4 October 2023 with some nasty surprises for UK civil servants. Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced his intention to reduce the size of the civil service by 66,000 jobs. Promises of green jobs and levelling up were replaced by demands for greater productivity from the public sector, further attacks on strikers and the dumping of net zero carbon goals.

Civil service jobs stood at 489,000 (full time equivalent) in June 2023, up about 2% since June 2022. Recruitment and job losses across the UK civil service have been uneven over the same period. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) lost more than 3,500 full-time jobs while some areas gained substantial numbers (7,000 into Home Office, 800 into Ministry of Justice outside the Prison Service).

Virtually all major areas report increases in the amount of pressure on staff, with workloads skyrocketing especially in those areas where staff numbers are in freefall. Underneath headline figures, some departments are having to continually recruit because of staff turnover, as low wages especially amongst the lowest grades of AA, AO and EO drive people to take other jobs.

Despite this, there has been little to nothing said about staffing or workload by the national leadership of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, which represents civil servants and privatised government workers, and in which all Broad Left Network supporters are members and activists. In the most recent national campaign, the most the leadership would seek was a “jobs guarantee.”

Successive Scottish Governments have granted Scottish civil servants a no-compulsory redundancies guarantee, which of course any serious union rep would welcome. But this has not protected Scottish Government staff from the pressures of workload due to understaffing. If the UK government gets away with destroying 66,000 jobs, this will diminish the funding available to Scotland under the Barnett formula.

Oppose all cuts and fight for 100,000 new civil service jobs

A united response to workload pressures and attacks on staffing is therefore required. This must be linked to the question of pay, as Jeremy Hunt’s intention to save £1 billion by attacking civil service jobs will not be the only means whereby the Tories seek to attack the “amorphous blob”, as the civil service has been described at fringe meetings with Tory cabinet ministers.

Additional savings from pay “restraint” (i.e., cuts in the pay of civil servants relative to the rising cost of living) are a favourite Tory means of clawing back the small concessions won through the £1,500 one-off, non-consolidated, pro-rata payment that most areas were paid in summer 2023, or the 4.5-5% average pay rises received by most government departments for 2023/24.

Other savings are planned by shrinking the number of government buildings (meaning longer commutes, less spending in town centres, fewer local services) and a 5% cut to all operational budgets for 2024/25. These too must be opposed vigorously by a robust industrial strategy, including strike action, by coordinating with other trade unions and by putting political pressure on MPs.

PCS has passed useful policies that lay the basis for this. Our call for 1 million climate jobs, for a just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy that supports workers and communities and for energy democracy are all objectives that the entire labour movement could rally around. The Prime Minister’s decision to essentially bin net zero objectives has been met with silence by the leaders of PCS, however.

Instead of exerting political pressure on the Labour opposition, the leadership of PCS under Fran Heathcote has become all but indistinguishable from the Labour front bench. PCS fringes at Labour conference are to be addressed by such dignitaries as the head of the Trades Union Congress – no friend to workers in struggle – and Lord Coaker, a shill for Ed Miliband’s proposed MOD cuts in 2015.

Long-standing PCS policies – opposition to benefit sanctions (which Sunak has also indicated should be tougher), opposition to cuts to social security (also touted by Sunak last week), demands for tax justice that would secure thousands of highly skilled jobs in HMRC, among others – have all been cast aside by a leadership increasingly focused on one thing – their own political survival at the top of the union, which matters to them above all else.

PCS also has long-standing policy in defence of Trans rights. The last year has seen a determined Tory attack on equality policies inside the civil service, and Sunak, in the headline speech of the Conference, attacked gender self-identification, the latest in a long line of Tory retreats from the one-time commitment by Theresa May to simplify the overly medicalised process for transitioning.

Again, the leadership of PCS has been silent at best, both on the wider “war on woke” narrative that the tabloids spin and which has been a feature of a battle going on in some government departments, and on this renewed attack on Trans rights by Sunak.

There is a route to a fighting, democratic, socialist alternative in PCS

Recent developments in PCS suggest that the current leadership are not having things all their own way. As acknowledged and welcomed by the Broad Left Network steering committee at the time, a group of several dozen union reps in the PCS Revenue and Customs recently resigned from PCS Left Unity, the ruling faction of the union’s National Executive and key employer-based executives in PCS.

Their statement, now signed by around a hundred activists, and a further article published on their website after PCS Left Unity responded in typically arrogant and dismissive fashion, detailed criticisms of the lack of accountability within PCS LU itself, the undemocratic attitude of Fran Heathcote and a whole series of mistakes by PCS’ leadership over years, in respect of digitalisation, how to support the union’s different employer groups etc.

Broad Left Network supporters generally agree with many of these criticisms and many, particularly those who themselves are active in PCS Revenue and Customs Group, have signed the statement or have signalled full support directly in communication with lead R&C activists. Marion Lloyd, national chair of the Broad Left Network and General Secretary candidate, has signalled her own support.

Broad Left Network give full support to the meeting organised for Tuesday 10^th October and urge socialists in PCS Revenue and Customs Group to sign the statement and to participate fully in a comradely discussion about how to build a fighting, democratic PCS which genuinely places equality at the heart of what we do.

A further development has since emerged yesterday, on 8 October 2023, when the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) formally announced their own resignation from PCS Left Unity.

In their statement, they agree with criticisms we have consistently put forward – that the NEC seized on the first available concession and then wound down the action, that the recent all-members ballot was deliberately confusing, that any attempt to escalate strikes opposed by the leadership.

Unfortunately, the SWP fail to mention that the only consistent force to call strikes early, to call them systematically, to escalate strike action, to undertake detailed analysis on what works and what does not and opposing cancellation of the June strikes has been the Broad Left Network.

SWP members on the union’s national executive voted in favour of cancelling the June strike action. It is not entirely clear if ordinary SWP members in PCS know this, and we believe that those same NEC members have now split with the SWP over their decision to leave PCS Left Unity.

Opposition to the careerism that now runs amok at the top of PCS, and commitment to a democratic, accountable PCS run by and in the interests of the lay members of the union are powerful organising principles that have been lost by the union’s NEC. They are also the basis for a serious fightback against the coming job cuts and attacks on our pay – regardless of whether Tories or Labour hold the whip.

Marion Lloyd and the Broad Left Network remain as committed as ever to rebuilding these in PCS, and this is the basis of our principled alliance in the General Secretary and Assistant General Secretary election with John Moloney, who we urge the SWP to support. Refusal to do so is support for John’s opponent, a union full time officer who has been at the heart of the union’s timid industrial strategy and who has actively worked against the union’s democratic lay structures.

The time for change in PCS is long overdue. Please support Marion Lloyd and John Moloney in the upcoming elections, for a return to PCS as a fighting socialist trade union.