The National Executive Committee of the PCS civil service union, with its new left majority, has agreed the following motion to go to the Congress of the TUC (Trades Union Congress) in September. This is a motion which trade unionists across the public sector and wider can rally around, to campaign for the trade union movement to pile the pressure onto Andy Burnham’s Labour government.
Congress notes the appointment of a new Labour prime minister, Andy Burnham. This change in leader means nothing unless there is a change in direction that meets the needs of workers and working-class communities, still caught in the cost-of-living crisis.
Congress calls on Burnham’s Labour government to launch sustained public investment, to jump-start economic growth. The UK is 80%-plus a service sector economy, which relies to a large extent on consumer demand to deliver growth. Congress endorses the research commissioned by the Public and Commercial Services Union which confirms that increasing public sector pay, especially for lower-paid workers, acts as an engine of growth and more than pays for itself through:
- Higher income tax receipts and NI contributions
- Increased consumption raising tax receipts
- Spillover into the private sector, boosting sales and potentially wages
- Reduced reliance on Universal Credit to subsidise poverty wages or help with housing costs
Congress applauds the rejection by PCS, by NEU, and by local government unions, of the attempts to restrain public sector pay rises to around 3.5%.
Congress calls on the new prime minister to reopen talks on public sector pay for 2026-27 to protect workers from the cost-of-living crisis.
Congress agrees to urgently call a national Saturday demonstration this autumn for investment in public services, against austerity and for pro-worker policies.
Congress urges all public sector unions to join a united campaign on pay, and, if needed, to plan for coordinated industrial action to secure real gains for workers.
Campaign for the unions to pile on the pressure
The National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) conference on 27 June agreed a list of demands to put on Andy Burnham’s government – steps that would really address the cost of living. The NSSN will take these demands to a lobby of the TUC in Brighton on Sunday 13 September. It will demand the TUC calls a national union-led demonstration against Labour austerity – a policy agreed at last year’s Congress, and called for in the PCS motion to the TUC.
NSSN action programme
- Above-inflation pay rises for workers – automatic rises in pay as inflation increases. In the public sector, for these to be fully funded by central government
- Scrap all age exemptions on pay, including the national minimum wage. For the immediate implementation of the TUC demand of a £15-an-hour minimum wage for all as a step towards a real living wage, without exemptions
- Stop the profiteering: nationalise the energy and water companies
- Freeze rents and energy and utility bills
- Demand that councils refuse to implement cuts, and instead pass no-cuts needs budgets
- Oppose disability benefit cuts and attacks on pensions and campaign for a fully resourced, supportive social security system to meet the needs of working-class people
- Demand that the TUC enact Congress 2025 policy by calling an Autumn national demo against Labour austerity. If not, for a trade union ‘coalition of the willing’ to step in to organise such a demonstration
- Support the NSSN lobby of the TUC Congress in Brighton from 1pm on Sunday 13th September, in the Holiday Inn Hotel
- Strike together: co-ordinate the fight on national public sector pay – unite workers across the public and private sectors
- Repeal all the Tory anti-union laws – immediate scrapping of the undemocratic 50% strike ballot threshold
- Restore the right to strike to the POA
- Workers’ unity to face down Reform and the far-right: for the unions to implement 2018 TUC Congress policy ‘to launch a campaign of Jobs and homes not racism’
- Launch the discussion for a Workers’ Charter, and how we can fight for it, against the attack on our living standards
Union branches, union reps and shop stewards committees, trades councils and individual union reps, members and activists can sign up to the NSSN Action Programme
NSSN lobby of the TUC Congress in Brighton from 1pm on Sunday 13 September, in the Holiday Inn Hotel
