PCS Broad Left Network

The Broad Left Network steering committee, speaking for scores of socialists and union activists within the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, welcomes the decision by dozens of reps and union activists to resign their membership of PCS Left Unity (LU).

It is clear from the statement released by an initial group of 25 reps and union activists, the vast majority of which are in Revenue and Customs (R&C) group within PCS that they are fed up with LU’s attacks on union democracy and with the deterioration of PCS Left Unity itself.

Evidently this captures something of a mood, as since the initial publication on 21 September, the number of signatories to the statement has grown to over 100 names, including a significant number of members of the R&C Group Executive Committee and many branch officers from across Revenue and Customs branches.

PCS Left Unity: a barrier to a serious national campaign

Once a campaigning, socialist organisation, PCS Left Unity has degenerated sharply to become a serious barrier to the building of an effective national campaign on pay, pensions, redundancy rights and jobs.

BLN activists, a section of whom were themselves long-standing members of PCS Left Unity, raised the question of a disaggregated strike ballot in 2018 and were denounced for it. Union President Fran Heathcote and others seized upon the excuse to have us purged from leadership roles.

Yet, in 2022, when a disaggregated ballot delivered a record vote and a mandate for action for 100,000 civil servants, there was no “mea culpa” from a leadership that had been proven wrong. Serious debate and consideration of tactics play second fiddle to a shallow triumphalism.

Unable to come up with serious-minded and strong responses on issues like Covid safety, compulsory redundancies in the civil service and the rapid rise of workloads in many areas, all too often the PCS Left Unity members of the National Executive and other leading committees have resorted to name calling and shrieked denunciation of non-PCS Left Unity members.

BLN activists therefore fully recognise the picture painted by those R&C reps and activists now resigning from PCS Left Unity – and we agree, the task now before us is to build the kind of union that we deserve, one based on the power of members, reps and branches over their workplaces and over their employers.

PCS Left Unity: also a serious threat to union democracy

As the statement by R&C group activists makes clear, LU has also become an opponent of transparency, of union democracy and of accountability of those charged with the executive authority to manage the day-to-day work of PCS as a campaigning union.

The statement highlights the recent instance of Fran Heathcote, the union’s national president, deliberately attempting to have an important motion, submitted by and about LGBT+ members of union, talked out at the 2023 Annual Delegate Conference.

PCS Left Unity’s response attempted to defend Fran Heathcote without even mentioning or explaining the text she sent, which asked activists to volunteer to speak unnecessarily, in order to get Motion A50 talked out.

Evasiveness of language has become an art-form at the top of PCS, with its sole purpose being to escape accountability of the leadership to members.

Our recent ballot on pay, organised by the PCS Left Unity majority on the union’s National Executive Committee, is surely the example par excellence. If you voted yes, the union’s pay campaign ended. If you voted no, the union’s pay campaign ended.

This ridiculous choice was set up by a leadership which realised mid-sellout that their attempt to make people swallow the £1,500 one-off non-consolidated payment as a victory wasn’t going to wash. They needed to mislead members so they could later say that calling off strike action, cancelling the re-ballots and cancelling the strike levy was what members wanted.

There are many other examples of dishonesty and abuse of power, large and small.

Internally, LU convenors have shut down meetings they knew they didn’t have a majority in, to avoid nominations or a majority of votes being cast for people out with the leadership clique.

Externally to LU, debates at the leading committees of the union are deliberately distorted so that when motions are proposed that contradict Heathcote’s view, no moving speech is permitted nor any right of reply when the usual “attack dogs” throw slurs and mud.

The PCS Left Unity response amusingly claims that the LU leadership doesn’t indulge in mudslinging. Yet time after time, Heathcote and Deputy President Martin Cavanagh chair meetings where their supporters quite happily throw every insult they can think of at those supporters of Broad Left Network who PCS members elect to the NEC or DWP GEC.

No justice is sought within the official processes of the union because the PCS Left Unity majority on the National Executive is misused whenever Rule 10 complaints are submitted: allies of the President get off lightly, opponents are not so lucky – as has been the case recently with prominent LGBT+ activist Saorsa Amatheia-Tweedale.

It is a positive step for those PCS activists now resigning from PCS Left Unity to declare that they’ve had enough and that the union deserves better.

What next?

These abuses – and many others like them – must end.

Our view is that PCS Left Unity must be forced out of power in PCS, and socialist activists and union reps must band together to build a genuinely open, democratic, campaigning PCS that fights for members and builds working class solidarity.

The view of the PCS Left Unity leadership, on the other hand, is that they bear no responsibility whatsoever and that those resigning are “hopelessly naïve” and, worse, that those now resigning do not “genuinely reflect the views of their members on the ground.”

PCS Left Unity figures frequently refer back to the defeat in the early 2000s of a genuinely right-wing leadership of PCS, and the role that LU played in it – back when it was far broader than it is today and contained much of what is today BLN, the Independent Left and those now resigning in R&C group.

That victory was so important because it ended the arrogance of a right-wing NEC that believed only they, as the chosen few, spoke for members, and that where anyone differed, they could safely be denounced as charlatans and fakers.

Every step that has been taken by Serwotka, Heathcote, Cavanagh and the others has remoulded the union’s leadership from that which led the valiant pensions dispute in 2011, that saw 2 million workers take strike action, to one much closer to the old right-wing. The high-handed, imperious and dismissive tones in which they write and speak give them away.

Captured within this article are the clear, political reasons why PCS Broad Left Network unanimously made the decision to stand a candidate in the forthcoming General Secretary election. For a democratic, inclusive trade union. For a fighting union, not the shallow, top-down, social media dominated mirage into which Heathcote et al are turning PCS.

If you want to read more about what we stand for, you can read it online. If you want to get involved, you can join us online and access activist resources online.

If you want to fight for a chance to change the union, then this needs us back in our workplaces, organising to nominate Marion Lloyd for General Secretary and John Moloney for Assistant General Secretary and then turning out the vote in the election shortly due!

The announcement of HMRC’s pay award has hammered the final nail into the coffin of the PCS NEC’s so-called pay “strategy”, rendering the outcome of the NEC’s face-saving ballot irrelevant in the process.

It has been clear since June that that the out-going General Secretary, Mark Serwotka, alongside his Left Unity NEC lackeys, believed that the Cabinet Office decision to increase the pay remit to 4.5% (in addition to awarding the controversial and non-consolidated Cost of Living Payment of £1500 for full-time staff) was sufficient to settle the pay dispute. PCS members from all factions and none overwhelmingly disagreed with this, such was the anger expressed in branch meetings, on social media and in the stage-managed PCS livestreams.

At this stage, if Left Unity truly believed that PCS is member-led, its NEC caucus would have accepted that it made a bad call and listened to PCS members, not only continuing the industrial action campaign, but also escalating it. However, despite what it says Left Unity does not believe in a member-led union – particularly so when members’ views chime with BLN demands. Instead, its response to members’ anger was to prevaricate for a number of weeks before launching a nebulous consultative ballot which has very little to do with the PCS pay campaign, but has a hell of a lot to do with Left Unity desperately scrambling for political cover ahead of the General Secretary election.

The BLN has argued throughout this pointless ballot that members should vote no, with one of the main reasons being that GECs have no capacity to push departments into meeting PCS’ 10% pay claim when departments are working within the Cabinet Office pay remit of 4.5%. PCS’ pay claim can only be met through sustained industrial action being taken throughout the Civil Service.

The DWP GEC has already rejected the DWP pay offer, meaning that a number of those same Left Unity members who voted for delegated pay bargaining at the NEC have now been forced to vote against its inevitable outcome at the DWP GEC. And now, their HMRC-based NEC comrades have been forced to do the same.

HMRC has announced the following pay award…

• 5.07% for AAs
• 6.27% for AOs
• 5.05% for Band Os
• 4.26% for HO to G6
• Non-consolidated pay for anything above the max for your grade
• Increased budget for one-off payments
• Introduction of increased pay for “critical roles”

Whilst the percentage value for each grade is about what we’d expect when working within the narrow-confines of the pay remit, the final pay award – which HMRC will impose without further discussion – is still a kick in the teeth for HMRC staff. HMRC has recognised that due to chronic low-pay, it cannot recruit into certain roles and in order to address this it will deem these roles to be “critical”, increasing the pay award for these roles in order to help recruit and retain staff.

Whilst this move is an admission by the department that pay is so poor that people simply do not want to work for HMRC, it has simultaneously diverted well-over £1m of our pay pot into its “Simply Thanks” scheme – effectively one-off non-consolidated awards, in the form of £20 shopping vouchers, that are occasionally given to PCS members who a panel has decided have went “above-and-beyond” their normal duties. This is horribly cynical – hard-pressed members should receive every penny available from the pay pot instead of being forced to do even more work for less pay, just to get a £20 voucher for Iceland.

Additionally, around 45% of HMRC staff are HO or above. This means that 45% of HMRC staff aren’t even getting the 4.5% set out in the pay remit – they’re getting 4.26%. That’s before even factoring in the non-consolidated aspect.

PCS members should direct a healthy dose of anger towards HMRC and the Cabinet Office, with a pay award which given the Cost of Living crisis can only be described as cynical and nasty. However, we should also remember that this award is a direct consequence of Left Unity NEC members’ decision to collapse PCS’ pay campaign. Indeed, in his last significant act as PCS General Secretary, Serwotka has obliterated PCS’ pay campaign in favour of a pay award which is less than half of PCS’ democratically agreed pay claim – and a pay award which in reality will see every single PCS member in HMRC receive a real-terms pay cut. This will be Serwotka’s legacy.

Whilst the BLN still urges PCS members to vote no in the NEC ballot, given the fact that PCS members in the largest two Civil Service departments have now received unacceptable pay awards, the NEC has no choice but to recommence PCS’ industrial action campaign – Left Unity cannot spin continued inaction at this stage as anything other than capitulation.

The BLN is absolutely convinced that, even after weeks of Left Unity dithering, a fresh industrial action campaign will deliver the pay rise that PCS members deserve – however based on their track record it is clear that PCS members cannot trust Left Unity to deliver. With pending elections, it now more obvious than ever that changes need to be made at the top of PCS which is why the BLN is urging all members, through their branches, to nominate Marion Lloyd for General Secretary and John Maloney for Assistant General Secretary.

Throughout this whole debacle, Marion and John have consistently argued for a continuation of PCS’ industrial action campaign in order to win the pay rise that we deserve and to avoid the consequences of Left Unity’s abject failure. If we have learned anything from this pay campaign, it is that Marion & John are the only candidates we can trust to deliver what PCS members want most – a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

On Monday 31 st July, a 7-page speakers brief enclosed in National Branch Bulletin BB-69-23 was emailed to all branch secretaries and all union reps across PCS. Officially from Mark Serwotka, the brief summarises the view of the majority of the union’s National Executive Committee’s (NEC) as to why people should vote yes in the ballot.

It is a staggering piece of sophistry and dishonesty. It misrepresents what the NEC have done. It misrepresents what those of us who oppose the NEC have said. It misrepresents how delegated pay bargaining works. It misrepresents what happens next in the campaign. In consequence, Broad Left Network are arguing that we must vote NO in the ballot.

So, what has the NEC done?

While the NEC seek to emphasise that “we have won significant concessions but the campaign must continue”.

First, we disagree that the concessions are as significant as the current NEC majority (a group called Democracy Alliance, made up of two factions, PCS Left Unity and PCS Democrats) are making out.

A £1,500 one-time, non-consolidated payment gets thinned down substantially by tax, national insurance contributions and for those in receipt of Universal Credit – estimated at tens of thousands across the UK civil service – will reduce any benefit entitlement.

Then we have the question of part-time staff; in the vast majority of civil service areas, the payment is being pro-rated, which means even before tax or anything else, some people are getting less, even though they’re unlikely to have a smaller mortgage or fewer bills.

Moreover, it is simply not enough when compared to inflation. Inflated prices are cumulative, adding up further and further year on year, whereas the £1,500 is one-off, paid and then forgotten, as prices continue to rise.

For most members this remains true even once Departmental pay awards are announced.

We aimed for a fully funded, 10% consolidated pay rise, with a minimum pay rate of £15 per hour, to eliminate the ridiculous situation of civil servants on the minimum wage, and a guaranteed, inflation proof increase for 2023/24. What has been gained falls dramatically short.

Second, and just as importantly, however, the NEC speakers’ brief declaring “the campaign must continue” is the kind of dishonesty we expect from Johnson, Sunak or Starmer – but not from the leadership of the union.

The campaign must continue, but we’re calling off the strikes.

The campaign must continue, but we’re calling off the re-ballots ordered by Conference.

The campaign must continue, but we’re cancelling the levy that feeds our strike fund.

The campaign must continue, but we didn’t bother submitting a revised pay claim for 2023/24 and simply relied on the previous claims, now outdated by cumulative inflation.

The campaign must continue, but they have told groups to enter departmental negotiations for 2023/4 pay within the limit imposed by Treasury but rejected by PCS Conference of 4.5- 5%.

Once all that is done, any rep is forced to ask, what campaign is left?

Reps should be aware that this stance from the NEC is utterly counterposed to the pompous and self-aggrandising manner in which Mark Serwotka moved his paper on 5th June, three days after receipt of the £1,500 offer, a paper which called off all campaigning activities.

At that meeting, Serwotka assumed the mantle of a wannabe hero, delivering from on high all that members could want. He openly spoke about the possibility of a ballot to settle the dispute, i.e., to accept the government’s offer as sufficient to end the national campaign.

Broad Left Network, Independent Left and even a small number of normally quiescent Left Unity supporters on the NEC bridled somewhat at this, and raised concerns that it was not enough and that the campaign should continue.

Nevertheless, all Left Unity supporters on the NEC voted for Serwotka’s paper, with a tiny number voting against a specific recommendation on the re-ballot in DWP, but all voting to suspend strike action. This demobilised the national campaign at a stroke.

The line that “the campaign must continue” is a recognition by the NEC majority that their position is precarious – they are at once trying to demobilise the campaign while posing as the leaders of the campaign. It is a trick stolen entirely from Napoleon in Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Cleverly, if utterly disingenuously, the NEC have recognised that “support the NEC strategy” is a line likely to be mocked in any room where the reps have a handle on what’s actually happening in the union. “Continue the national campaign” is different altogether, so they have married the two up and are utilising the mechanisms of the union to bludgeon their view through in a membership ballot, while blocking the democratic bodies of the union,
including branches and groups, from expressing legitimate dissent from the strategy.

Our hope is that all members will see clearly that you can’t “continue the campaign” by calling it off, which is what the NEC has done. We must vote AGAINST endorsing the NEC strategy. We must vote no.

What about delegated pay bargaining?

Central to the argument in the national bulletin is the view that we must pause our strikes while delegated pay bargaining begin. Essentially the NEC majority view is that it is nonsensical to be carrying out strike action when your negotiators are working out a pay deal with the employers.

Yet this ignores a crucial fact – one that is not mentioned by the national bulletin at all, almost like the NEC want reps to forget about it:

The Treasury Pay Remit cap of 4.5% (or 5% for low-waged) is still in place! Average pay rise across civil service areas must be contained under this figure.

This makes a mockery of some of the bulletin’s claims, such as how there are staff in the Home Office being offered 13%. This is true – but the bulletin doesn’t say how many relative to the entire 43,000 staff in the Home Office. The bulletin doesn’t admit that the overall Home Office pay offer will live under the Treasury cap: pay awards under this cap are robbing Peter to pay Paul, trading off inflation-proof pay rises for some against severe pay cuts for others.

When this Treasury Pay Remit was published in March 2023, the current leadership of the NEC railed against it. Now they are ordering Departmental pay negotiators into talks, and calling off strikes, without it being removed. What has changed?

The £1,500 one-time, non-consolidated, pro-rated payment is all that has changed. With this one change in place, the NEC have thrown out the demands posed by PCS Annual Delegate Conferences in 2022 and 2023.

Since the NEC have decided to use the Home Office pay award as a bit of a poster-child, it bears pointing out that thousands of PCS members’ pay awards in the Home Office will fall below the rate of inflation even when money made available under the 4.5% cap and the £1,500 one-time payment are added together.

Celebrating this as some kind of triumph is bizarre.

Our battle is not just with individual civil service employers. It is with the government, and their imposition of a Treasury Pay Remit that blocks a 10% pay rise for 2022-23 and an inflation proof pay rise for 2023/24.

We require the Treasury to be brought to the bargaining table, to cough up more money for all civil service employers. The consequences if we don’t are that, as announced recently in Ministry of Defence, job cuts will be imposed even to pay for a limited, sub-inflation pay award.

From the moment of the government’s offer, on 2 nd June, we should have called further strike action. We should have escalated by calling further national strike action. We should have re-balloted in DWP. And if the NEC had spent half the effort actually leading a determined campaign that they’ve spent trying to convince people that their naked emperor is lavishly dressed, we’d be in a vastly different position.

A strategy that can win!

The NEC argue in their bulletin that they have “made a careful analysis of the current position and considered in detail the tactical and strategic possibilities”.

Frankly we’re surprised that members of the NEC majority could spell all those big words but if you are attending a meeting, please ask them to produce this “careful analysis”.

It doesn’t exist.

Yet they have to claim this, to lend credence to their further claim that our call for the continuation of strike action “is made without any proposals on the tactics and strategy.”

Even this is dishonesty from the NEC – because we have quite clearly laid out what their strategy should have been, and what it should be now.

We must immediately launch a massive member-facing effort to whip discontent with the obvious problems with all delegated pay awards, many of which have been imposed during the months of NEC inactivity between June 5th and today. For some these awards might be sufficient – but for most they will fall significantly short.

The discontent over the pay awards, the discontent over the £1,500 one-time, non-consolidated, pro-rated payment, the discontent over the job cuts that are coming, the discontent over the continued refusal to move on our pensions and continued threat to our redundancy rights can be united with the battle over office closures into a coherent campaign based on demands already agreed by PCS Annual Delegate Conference.

We must put forward a coherent strategy that reflects genuine analysis about what is required to win our demand for a 10% pay rise for 2022/23, for an inflation proof pay rise for 2023/24 and for a £15 per hour pay floor to seriously tackle low pay in the UK civil service:

• National strike action, across all civil service employers with a mandate, at a faster pace than the three months of delay the NEC showed up until 1 st Feb 2023, and with sufficient determination to prove to members that their union is serious.
• Targeted strike action, across those areas where sustained action will resume
  pressure on the government to come to the table to bargain, not to dismissively
  throw us £1,500 and hope that this is sufficient to divide us.
• Hardship support for all branches – analysis must be undertaken of all hardship expenditures at branch level to calculate the pace at which we are spending money, compared to what action this more targeted approach allows us to deliver.
• Re-ballots in all areas where the mandate has lapsed or is lapsing, including the
  Department for Work and Pensions and Revenue and Customs Groups.
• A serious discussion, primed by an informed bulletin to all branches, on the potential impact of action short of strike action, in magnifying the industrial impact of strikes.

More can be added, and plenty of nuances exist as to how serious, socialist, campaigning reps would continue our campaign – but the reality is, had we been put in charge of PCS in the May 2023 elections, we would already have accomplished all of these, while the PCS Left Unity NEC has mostly dithered and dissembled.

They must be ousted, their continued subversion of our national campaign and our union’s democracy must be terminated. A socialist General Secretary at the head of a campaigning, democratic union could dramatically open the union up to the activist and membership base once more – which is why we are calling for all branches to nominate Marion Lloyd for GS, and to re-nominate John Moloney for Assistant GS.

Rebuild the PCS National Campaign – elect Marion Lloyd as PCS General Secretary

The union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) met on 12^th and 13^th July to rubber stamp the attempt by the Left Unity majority to end the union’s national campaign on pay, pensions, redundancy rights and jobs for 2023.

Broad Left Network supporters on the NEC, along with Independent Left NEC members, voted in wholesale opposition to these proposals, and insisted that the NEC must carry out its mandate.

Our view is very simple.

PCS National Campaign must continue – there is more to be won!

Annual Delegate Conference in 2022 and 2023 issued instructions to the NEC to demand a 10% pay rise for 2022/23, to fight to recoup the 2% we have overpaid on our pensions for years now, to defend the civil service compensation scheme and to demand a jobs guarantee.

ADC 2023 was told by NEC speaker Lorna Merry, also Group President of PCS in Revenue and Customs, that the NEC would also factor in an inflation-proof pay demand for 2023/24.

As we stand, very little of this has been achieved – indeed when it comes to demanding an inflation-proof pay rise for 2023/24 in addition to a 10% pay rise for 2022/23, there is no evidence that the NEC even bothered to live up to the promise given to all branch delegates assembled at Conference.

On pay, once the noise and fanfare from the NEC majority abates, members will have suffered an average pay cut in the last two years of approximately 10%, once our pay rises for 2022/23 and 2023/24 are compared with inflation, i.e., with the average rise in prices across the economy.

On pensions, not an iota of progress has been made. On our redundancy rights, the government is continuing to run their public consultation on cuts and plainly intends to implement those cuts in 2025. On jobs, no guarantee was achieved.

It is obvious, therefore, that despite the concession of a £1,500 non-consolidated, pro-rated, one-off lump sum payment in most Westminster areas, the campaign must continue.

As recently as May 2023, the NEC won a renewed mandate for strike action in an all-members ballot, in which tens of thousands of members and dozens of bargaining areas got over the line. This was confirmed later that month by the votes at PCS Annual Delegate Conference, where three motions were debated, all of which demanded continuation of the campaign.

Broad Left Network supporters on the NEC therefore argued that the NEC needs to carry out this mandate. Further, Annual Delegate Conference 2023 instructed the NEC to get on with the job of re-balloting DWP. Revenue and Customs Group Conference ordered a re-ballot for their group too.

Despite this, the NEC majority, led by President Fran Heathcote, has done everything they can to squander the momentum painstakingly built up, at the cost of millions of pounds, by the union’s national campaign since our first strike mandate was won in November 2022.

NEC majority delays and demobilises the National Campaign

When news broke in June 2023 that the government would offer a £1,500 non-consolidated, pro-rated, one-off lump sum payment to Westminster civil servants, Heathcote and her NEC minions immediately suspended strike action, including calling off in-progress strikes in DVLA.

Key NEC members, such as Deputy President Martin Cavanagh, dishonestly argued in meetings and on social media that we now needed to see what employers would offer for 2023/24, so they voted for the NEC to instruct pay negotiators in each area that delegated pay bargaining should now begin.

Pay negotiations are an arcane affair even for union activists, so it is important to understand the extent to which this decision – by an NEC with Heathcote in the chair and all of their “Left Unity” hangers-on attending – was a flagrant betrayal of union members and the national campaign.

At the time Heathcote and co made this decision, they knew with 100% certainty that employers would not be able to offer inflation-proof pay rises to PCS members. Pay across all Westminster areas is constrained by the Treasury insistence that average pay rises live within a cap of 4.5%.

Anything above 4.5% (with a small amount of wiggle room of an extra 0.5% for the low paid) would mean someone else’s pay would have to be held below 4.5%.

In that context, earnest delegated pay negotiations are a distraction, especially when happening at the same time as the NEC calling off strikes and demobilising the national campaign.

Instead, with the Tory government having blinked on pay, the NEC should have immediately gone out to whip up members to redouble our efforts under a banner of “More can be won!” They should have called further national and targeted strike action, as we proposed at the time.

Employers may ultimately have sought to impose pay awards for 2023/24 regardless, but had the NEC maintained momentum, members would have been well prepared to return to the picket lines to fight against the inevitable real-terms pay cut.

Instead of showing determined leadership, the Heathcote-led NEC called off our strikes, called off the re-ballot in DWP and failed to take any steps to prepare members to continue the campaign. They tried to hide this by arguing that the NEC needed a “consultation” amongst members.

To get the result they wanted, they published a Speakers Brief to branch secretaries across the union filled with distortion, misrepresentation and outright falsehoods, including attempting to demoralise reps with the view that at least PCS had now achieved parity with the public sector and if we fought on we’d be alone.

Both of these statements are untrue.

On 14^th July, the government accepted the recommendations of the public sector pay review bodies. Average pay rises of up to 7% are countenanced by this, compared with the average cap of 4.5% for the civil service – notwithstanding the fact that it has now come to light that senior civil servants will average 5.5%!

Other unions, including ASLEF, the RMT, the BMA for both junior doctors and consultants, the UCU and other unions with smaller numbers in the public sector, such as Unite members in ambulances and emergency call centres, have all undertaken industrial action in the last six weeks.

The NEC majority wanted to be let off the hook, and did everything they could to muddy the waters, so that members would not be given a lead to fight for more.

That the results of the “consultation” by the NEC, wasn’t even presented in full to the NEC meetings on 12^th and 13^th July is proof that the majority weren’t really interested anyway as they already knew what their answer was going to be – they always intended to end the strikes and shutter the campaign.

Even the partial consultation document that was presented, listing many but not all of the responses emailed in by branches, makes for fascinating reading. Lots of branches are unambiguously in favour of continuing the campaign. Those branches which are nominally in favour of ending the campaign have lots of questions, such as, “Can the NEC guarantee that we’ll all receive the £1,500 and a consolidated pay rise of 4.5%?

Of course, the NEC can’t guarantee that. The £1,500 and whatever consolidated pay rise is offered within the limits set by Treasury in March 2023 must both come from within existing budgets. This means that the money available will vary in each area, which is why the overarching aim of the campaign was always to force the Treasury to put more money on the table, and the Treasury have not done this. The NEC speakers brief, however, pretended that a pay award of 4.5% was a certainty.

Mark Serwotka, speaking after the announcement of the Treasury pay remit of a 4.5% cap to average pay rises, called the cap “insulting”. Yet it is precisely with this cap still firmly in place that the NEC majority under Fran Heathcote wants to declare victory. Their dishonesty and incompetence in the execution of the instructions given to them by the union’s democratic Conference is complete. 

Balloting on the NEC “strategy” instead of getting on with the job

To rubber stamp their failure, they now intend to hold a ballot of all members covered by the national dispute. This will be held from 3^rd August until 31st August.

Continuing the NEC majority’s attempts to muddy the waters – and reflecting the pressure they are under from activists and branches – the NEC will not hold a straight yes or no vote on whether members have received enough in pay to close the campaign for this year.

That would expose the real views of Heathcote and Cavanagh in particular at just the moment where they have their eyes set on becoming General Secretary and National President respectively.

The ballot will instead focus on whether or not members “endorse the NEC strategy”. Raucous jeers from all corners of the union retort, “what strategy?!”

Heathcote and co intend to argue that the national campaign hasn’t ended at all.

There will be no strikes. There will be no re-ballots. There will be no levy. But, says the NEC, the campaign continues! Perhaps the NEC majority are eager to hold another petition. Back in late 2020, when Broad Left Network supporters on the NEC urged ballots both on safety during the pandemic and on pay, the NEC instead put their effort into turning out 100,000 signatures to a Parliamentary petition. Such weakness resulted in a pay freeze for 2021.

A 14^th July email to all members gives further insight into the continuing flagrant dishonesty of the NEC:

“At this point in time, we need to go into talks with employers on pay for the 2023/24 pay round and demand at least the same increases as other public sector workers. It’s only when the talks are completed that the union will know what consolidated pay rises members will get for 2023/24. We can then judge that against inflation and against the pay review announcements made yesterday.”

Inflation, when judged by the lower estimate, is 8.7%. Higher estimates, using the Retail Price Index instead of the Consumer Price Index show inflation increasing by well over 10%. Even this higher figure is likely to underestimate the impact of rising prices. Price rises are often sharper for working class people. Food, for example, makes up a higher proportion of what we spend our salary on, and food inflation is around 19%.

There is not even the slightest chance that departments will make an offer that keeps up with inflation for most staff. Because of the 4.5% cap to average pay rises across departments (with the extra 0.5% for the low paid), any pay rise that exceeds 4.5% will mean someone else gets a pay rise of under 4.5%.

Despite the trumpeting of certain specific pay offers and high-sounding percentage pay rise figures, as recently in the Home Office, the NEC’s rush to get into delegated pay talks and lack of a strategy to force the Treasury to put more money on the table will either result in relatively flat pay rises clustered around 4.5-5% that fail to meet inflation or they’ll result in a small number getting high percentages while many others get consolidated pay rises well below even 4.5%. This is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

To argue, therefore, that strikes must temporarily abate so that employer pay negotiations can begin (i.e., so we can find out just how deeply members’ pay will be cut) is not just dishonest, it is utterly moronic. It is the further proof that the NEC majority under Fran Heathcote doesn’t want to talk genuinely about the next steps in our campaign – it just wants off the hook from running a campaign at all.

Vote NO in the strategy ballot – then vote Marion Lloyd for PCS General Secretary

Broad Left Network supporters across PCS will argue against the NEC strategy in the upcoming ballot. The NEC doesn’t have a strategy.

We will urge members to vote to continue the campaign, to call further strikes in those areas where we have a mandate and to re-ballot in those areas where the mandate is expiring or was not renewed in May by the tiniest of margins.

Serious work will have to be done to restore confidence amongst members. Given that pay rises will inevitably fall shy of inflation, we will be able to count on members’ anger. So long as we give members a clear lead and outline a coherent campaign of industrial action, we will be able to mobilise and win future strike ballots.

What recent events underscore, however, is how much damage is being done – to our members, to our campaigns, to the union itself – by a leadership that doesn’t have the first clue how to lead.

The dishonesty and Orwellian doublespeak in the union’s national communications to members is undermining confidence and fragmenting our national campaign – and the NEC majority then has the cheek to turn around and to try and blame anyone who disagrees with them for being “factional”.

Having thus disorganised and fragmented the national campaign by poor leadership, the NEC majority then want to ballot, in the hope that members being disheartened will let them off the hook of having to get out and fight a serious battle against the government. Things cannot go on like this.

We must get rid of PCS Left Unity and particularly of General Secretary-wannabe, Fran Heathcote, who still has not apologised for her recent underhanded and undemocratic attempt to keep LGBT+ rights motions from being heard whilst chairing Annual Delegate Conference this year.

For this reason, Broad Left Network supporters have endorsed Marion Lloyd as our candidate for PCS General Secretary. For twenty years Marion has been the voice of the members on the union’s National Executive. She is President of the union in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. At every step, she has put forward clear ideas on how to build the union’s National Campaign.

BLN supporters have also worked carefully with supporters of the Independent Left in PCS, to design a joint socialist programme on which Marion will stand alongside incumbent Assistant General Secretary, John Moloney, as they attempt to put the needs and voices of members at the top of the union’s agenda, and as they fight to restore momentum to the campaign that Fran Heathcote has stalled.

Union reps and union members: we need socialists in the top job in PCS – when the time comes later this year, ask your branches to nominate and mobilise all members to vote for Marion Lloyd for GS and for John Moloney as Assistant GS.

The fight must go on!

Statement from PCS Broad Left Network (BLN)

On Saturday 1 July, a special conference of socialist activists from across the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) trade union met to discuss the situation facing more than 400,000 civil servants on pay, redundancy rights, pensions and jobs.

BLN conference unanimously agreed that the government’s sole meaningful concession, asking departments and agencies to stump up a £1,500 one-off non-consolidated payment to staff, from within existing budgets, was not good enough.

Activists from across PCS condemned the attitude of the current PCS leadership.

The PCS national executive, led by a group known as Left Unity, has already taken steps to wind down the union’s national campaign, by suspending strike action in key areas such as the Driver and Vehicle and Licencing Agency (DVLA), and by indefinitely suspending reballots, including in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

BLN members have spent the last three weeks organising members’ meetings to discuss the government’s ‘offer’, which is already in the process of being implemented, regardless of what the union’s leadership decides to do with our national campaign.

Saturday’s conference heard clearly the overwhelming view from the union’s members that the fight must go on – because we need an inflation-proof pay rise. We don’t accept the Treasury’s published pay remit of 4.5-5% for 2023-24. We need to force the Treasury to put new money on the table, as so far all pay awards will come from within existing departmental budgets.

Several organisations have already announced that they can’t afford the £1,500. Others have announced that meeting the terms of the offer and any consolidated pay award under the 4.5% cap is likely to result in job cuts. Activists are not prepared to trade off jobs for pay, and members are ready to fight.

BLN activists have agreed that the current leadership has not exhausted our campaign options – having delayed national strike action by three months, from November 2022 until February 2023, and only calling three days of this action. Other options such as action short of strike action must also now be considered, despite the continuing fervent opposition of the union’s leadership.

Members’ strikes have partially succeeded despite PCS leadership failures.

These actions taken by the current leadership of PCS, particularly outgoing general secretary Mark Serwotka and current president Fran Heathcote, has demonstrated how thoroughly out of touch they are with the needs of members, who are overwhelmingly saying they want to fight on.

Under them, the union’s leadership has resorted to scare tactics to avoid serious discussion about how we could continue the campaign. In DWP, this has involved asking members about “more unpaid action” and “doubling [their] payments into the levy for the remainder of the year”.

From the beginning, BLN reps have been critical of the NEC for calling targeted action, punctuated by one day of national unpaid action per month, without ever analysing or making a case about how the action is contributing to forcing the government to retreat.

To jump straight to trying to frighten members about unpaid action or doubling a £3-5 levy, without concretely explaining why either option would help, is a deliberate attempt to elicit an unfavourable reaction. The union’s leadership has begun its own ‘Project Fear’ and is not fit to lead.

Elect a fighting general secretary and assistant general secretary to continue our campaign!

BLN activists have agreed to stand candidates in the elections due later in 2023 for general secretary and assistant general secretary.

Marion Lloyd, currently union president in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), has been unanimously agreed as the BLN candidate for PCS general secretary.

Fiona Brittle, who currently serves on the national executive and on the union’s Scottish government executive committee, has been unanimously agreed as our candidate for assistant general secretary (AGS).

Saturday’s BLN conference instructed the elected BLN steering committee to continue to seek agreement with the PCS Independent Left on a programme that would allow us to fight the upcoming elections on a joint slate, with BLN AGS candidate Fiona Brittle standing down in favour of IL candidate for PCS AGS, John Moloney.

Fran Heathcote and Paul O’Connor have been announced as the Left Unity candidates for general secretary and assistant general secretary. They are part of the current leadership and its record. We need to stop their attempts to end the pay campaign and defeat them in the election for general secretary and assistant general secretary.

Whilst the Left Unity-led NEC maintains its efforts to destroy PCS’ pay campaign, it is clear that the arguments being put forward by PCS’ Broad Left Network (BLN) to escalate the campaign are resonating with members throughout PCS. This was particularly evident in PCS’s recent Facebook livestream, a farcical affair which saw the President & General Secretary repeatedly trot out their line about canvassing members’ views, whilst completely ignoring the views of members commenting during the livestream – the vast majority of who were calling for the campaign to continue.

Evidently, members’ anger during the livestream was fuelled not just by the NEC’s obvious (if not directly stated) desire to abandon PCS’ pay campaign, but also by the speakers’ notes the NEC issued to branches ahead of branch members’ meetings. Activists throughout PCS not only saw through the NEC’s blatant attempt to control the narrative of the members’ meetings, but roundly condemned the NEC for producing a document so defeatist that it could have been written by the Cabinet Office.

In response to BLN calls for branches to ignore the NEC speakers’ notes and conduct open & honest members’ meetings, the Left Unity-led GEC within Revenue & Customs went even further than their NEC overlords. R&C Branch Briefing 026-23 saw the GEC patronisingly claim that it would be far too difficult for R&C branches to organise their own members’ meetings and instead undermined every branch within the group by organising these meetings instead of branches.

The format of these meetings consists of…

• 30 minutes of GEC members talking.
• PCS members being forcibly muted so they cannot speak during the meeting.
• PCS members being unable to communicate with each other via the chat function – instead only being able to send messages to a PCS administrator account.

Let’s be clear – these are not members’ meetings, but simply GEC talking shops which represent nothing more than Left Unity’s desperation to ensure that it remains in total control of the narrative. And if this wasn’t bad enough, by asking members to consider whether they believe we are in now in a position to settle, the GEC is falsely implying that members have to decide between accepting the Cabinet Office’s position or continue the fight. Nothing could be further from the truth.

What the GEC neglected to say is that the Cabinet Office hasn’t made a pay offer to settle the dispute – the Cabinet Office is unconditionally imposing the pay award & Cost of Living payment. In short, receipt of the pay award is not contingent upon PCS abandoning its pay campaign and were members to be informed of this, it would quite clearly have a massive impact on their views as to how we proceed.

Clearly – and as is now widely understood with the PACR agreement – the Left Unity-led R&C GEC cannot be trusted to tell members the whole truth – a lie by omission is still a lie. This is why all branches in R&C must organise their own members’ meetings. As democratically elected reps in R&C, we are obliged to represent the best interests of our members and given that the GEC has proven itself unwilling to do so, we must do this ourselves. The BLN calls on all branches within R&C to organise their own members’ meetings, tell their members everything the GEC withheld and let the NEC know what our members actually think of their desire to capitulate.

Let’s reject Left Unity defeatism and win the pay rise that our members deserve!

Following a meeting on Monday 5 th June, the union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) has moved rapidly to demobilise the PCS national campaign, in flagrant defiance of a mandate granted just weeks earlier by the union’s Annual Delegate Conference, which met in Brighton from 23 rd to 25 th May.

It is clear from written materials published by the NEC, including an all-members e-mail issued on Wednesday 7 th and a branch bulletin issued to PCS branch secretaries on Thursday 8 th June, that the NEC has decided to abandon the fight for our claims on pay, pensions, redundancy rights and jobs.

These events follow a meeting between General Secretary Mark Serwotka and the government’s Paymaster General, Tory MP Jeremy Quin, last Friday, 2 nd June. At that meeting, the government offered a one-off non-consolidated (i.e. not pensionable) payment of £1,500 and little else to settle the union’s dispute in the civil service.

Departmental intranets and union social media have exploded with members furious at being fobbed off and asking questions Serwotka and his political allies in “PCS Left Unity” don’t seem to have bothered to ask – like what about our pensions.

Low-wage members in receipt of Universal Credit have pointed out that they will get very little extra money, as the £1,500 will simply cancel out their Universal Credit. Part-time staff have queried whether the money is pro-rata.

Members have pointed out that this lump sum, which the NEC are claiming is to address pay for 2022-23 (although the government has amended pay for 2023-24, not 22-23) doesn’t come close to matching 2 years of 10-14% inflation.

Last year’s award was 2-3%, this year’s award must live within a cap to average increases of 4.5%, and now there is this £1,500 lump sum. This must be set against 2 years of inflation totalling around 24% – so even with this lump sum, it’s a 10% pay cut for most.

All the pretty words promising no further cuts to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme until 2025 (even though the public consultation on cuts continues) and reiterating already existing protections included in the 2016 Jobs Protocol are hardly worth a brass farthing.

PCS Left Unity-led NEC takes concrete steps to demobilise PCS

Despite members’ anger, the NEC majority, allies of Serwotka and President Fran Heathcote, who call themselves “PCS Left Unity”, have decided to dump the national campaign.

Re-ballots have been suspended in key areas like the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). DWP covers 45,000 of the 65,000 members who didn’t get a strike mandate in our last ballot in May. Re-balloting was ordered by the union’s Conference and this has been disregarded by the NEC majority.

Departmental pay bargaining, previously suspended by PCS to make it clear to the government that we wanted our pay demands to be met at a national level by additional Treasury funding, has now been authorised so long as epartments sign up to pay the one-off £1,500.

This is the NEC signalling that they’re happy to live within the Treasury pay remit published in March 2023. This imposed a cap of 4.5% on average pay rises in civil service areas (5% for the low paid), so long as the one-off lump sum of £1,500 is paid. Yet this £1,500 is unfunded by Treasury.

Departments will have to find this themselves, meaning cuts in other areas.
Under the NEC’s approach, negotiators at Departmental level will go into potentially months of protracted talks about 23/24 pay, not about 22/23 pay, wasting time in talks that cannot produce anything but a pay cut when compared to inflation, and delaying action under the six-month strike mandate won by tens of thousands of union members in May.

Further evidence of the NEC’s determination to wind down the campaign came with publication of Speaker’s Notes to branch secretaries on 8th June.

Realising its error and under fire from all sides, the NEC has now urged all branches to hold members’ meetings to determine feedback from members. The briefing provided to branches does not offer options, such as escalating the campaign. It implies the offer is the best we can hope for, to get branch reps to do the Tory government’s dirty work of talking up the offer. To this we reply, “Not a chance!”

Escalate the PCS national campaign to win

At every executive committee of the union, from branches to the national executive, BLN supporters have made the argument that we are far from having exhausted the options open to us in prosecuting our dispute with the government.

If the NEC is now trying to talk down its own campaign of targeted, paid strike action, we say significant targeted action is still possible. Further, we can ballot for action short of strike action, to ramp up the pressure on the government. We can move to calling serious national strike action, not just paid, targeted action – as has every other major union involved in a dispute in the past year.

Every Department and agency of the civil service and related public services have pressure points, both in how services are set up and at particular times of year, which we can exploit through rolling strike action. This limits strike-related loss of pay for each individual member while maximising pressure on the various employers.

BLN supporters on the NEC have raised this and been shouted down, yet at Conference in May, many of those who supported the NEC’s motion (A290) indicated in their speeches that they supported further national action and the use of action short of strike action.

If we accept the first concession offered by the government, we fail to understand the significance of their offer. Civil servants have traditionally been the poor relations of the public sector. That the government has moved at all is an indication that they are weak and they are under pressure to come to a resolution.

Good. If Tory backbenchers are worried that they’re losing votes because the public sees the incompetence with which the government has managed the civil service, all the more reason to come to a settlement on terms that redress the fair grievances of PCS members. A general election is around the corner and this can focus minds; it is time to step up our campaign.

Branches must organise to assert lay-control of PCS

If the NEC is unable or unwilling to do its duty and lead the union’s democratically agreed campaign, it should convene a Special Delegate Conference to decide our next steps.

The pathetic half-measure of asking branches to consult members while providing no alternative to the current offer whatsoever is such an obvious failure that if the NEC members who voted for it had any self-respect, they’d resign in disgrace.

Compare this to unions that are far from militant, like the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which timidly recommended a poor government offer to its members, balloted on it and received a resounding rejection. Members demanded the RCN leadership get on with the fight. The current PCS NEC won’t even call a ballot to put this before the members.

It is members who have sacrificed in the campaign so far, by paying the levy and by taking action – it is ultimately members who should decide what happens to the campaign. The job of the NEC is to be the voice of members both to the employer and inside the machine of the union, but the current NEC are not capable of this.

Our NEC, dominated by Left Unity and the Democrats, has ceased to exercise any independent control of the union, entirely ceding control to General Secretary Mark Serwotka.

This is how the Speakers’ Notes referred to above and contained in PCS bulletin BB-55-23, which talk up the recent offer from the government, while stressing how alone we are if we decide to fight on, can be issued without every having been seen by the National Executive Committee.

It was Serwotka himself who took the lead at PCS Conference this year in promoting current national president Fran Heathcote as his successor, since he retires later this year.

Serwotka’s unelected clique at the top of the union know she won’t disrupt their control. BLN calls on all branches to organise all-members meetings and to put the following proposals:

 That the National Executive Committee organise an urgent Special Delegate
Conference to consider next steps in the union’s national campaign, so that all
alternatives can be fully explored and debated.

 That the NEC immediately write back to Paymaster General Jeremy Quin to outline further changes to the Treasury Pay Remit 2023/24 that would achieve our central demands of a consolidated 10% pay rise for 2022/23 and an above-inflation pay rise for 2023/24.

 That the NEC urgently serve notice for a two-day all-member strike at a time most likely to maximise disruption to the government, and announce further all-member action to make it clear that our campaign continues til the government gets serious.

 That the NEC persist in the paid, targeted strike action already agreed, regardless of whether Departments and agencies pay the £1,500.

 That the NEC draws up further plans for paid, targeted strike action, and for unpaid rolling action that would serve to maximise dislocation of government functions while minimising the loss of pay to any individual member.

 That the NEC proceeds with all re-ballots authorised by PCS Annual Delegate
Conference and asked for by PCS Group Conferences as a matter of urgency, all of these to include action short of strike action.

 That the NEC considers the best time to re-ballot all other members to gain a
mandate for action short of strike action in addition to the strike mandate awarded by members.

The BLN is very clear that the non-consolidated £1500 “offer” from the Cabinet Office is not good enough and should be rejected.

The NEC are clearly in favour of it, they are afraid to come out and say so and so instead are simply winding down the campaign.

We urge all reps and members to act now to extend democratic control over our national campaign and where we go from here by asking your BEC, Regional Committee, Group Executive and individual members to write to the General Secretary demanding a special conference which they have the power call under Supplementary Rules 6.6 and 7.1(j).

Our union’s democracy is under attack, with campaigns ordered just weeks ago at a full Conference being scrapped before our eyes. A Special Delegate Conference must be summoned to oppose this attack. We call for all workplaces, branches, regions and groups of the union to help us organise it, and for PCS members and activists to join the Broad Left Network and to help us rebuild a member-led union.

On Friday 2nd June 2023, the Cabinet Office, which oversees matters that affect the entire Civil Service, not just individual Departments or agencies, published an addendum to the Treasury Pay Remit. This remit was originally published in March and outlined a cap on average pay rises of between 4.5 and 5%. The new addendum now adds the flexibility to make a one-off £1,500 payment. We await further details of the offer and what it means for PCS members. It appears that the £1,500 per full-time member of staff regardless of grade that the Cabinet Office has announced, is not new money. It is money that will have to be found within existing budgets. This amounts to tens of millions of pounds being cut from other areas even in medium sized departments.

Even if it is new money, however, and even if the £1,500 is an additional payment on top of average pay awards of up to 5%, this still does not meet the most basic demand of the PCS campaign for a 10% pay award. This pay claim was designed to cover the rising cost of living in 2022-23, which was over 10% at a time when many areas only received a 2-3% pay rise. Our pay ultimately fell by around 10% up to June 2022, taking into account the pay rise we received compared to rising prices averaging 13.7%. Forecast inflation for the year up to June 2023 is above 11%. The total fall in our salaries over two years, relative to price rises, is approximately 22%. An AO receiving a 5% pay award plus £1,500 would only win back 12.5%, just over half what they’ve lost. For an EO it would be worse; only 9.5% won back against 22% lost. In addition, we are still paying more for our pensions than we should be (to the value of about 2% of our salary every year), getting less from our pensions and retiring later than ever. The £1,500 lump some being put forward by the government will not affect our pension values either; this amount will be non-consolidated, i.e., not included in the pay that is reckonable when calculating pensions.

While the government are often indifferent to the needs of civil servants and to the needs of users of the public services we provide, they are not stupid. This is an attempt to split off the lowest paid, many of whom will also have had a wage lift of around 5% when the national living wage rose – still not reaching the value of what they’ve lost through price rises, from the union’s national campaign.

Interestingly, this offer appears to fall some way short of information leaked to union pay negotiators earlier in 2023, that the government were considering a pay remit of 7% in addition to a one-off payment. This is likely to reflect the unwillingness of the leadership of PCS to mount serious national strike action and action short of strikes in addition to their preferred tactic of paid, targeted action. A National Executive Committee meeting is scheduled for Monday 5th June and we await what further news this brings.

At this stage, however, our view is that the campaign must continue – the actions instructed by PCS Conference, including re-ballots in big areas like DWP, must be undertaken. The leadership of the union must not duck out of a serious campaign based on this offer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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