What role could a left-led PCS union play?

David Semple, PCS deputy president, personal capacity

Keir Starmer was booted out due to his immense unpopularity following the Labour government’s continuation of Tory austerity. Despite his pronouncements, in reality Andy Burnham, with the backing of all the Blairites and Starmerites in the Labour Party, is offering essentially the same.

There is a new left leadership elected to the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the PCS civil service union. What potential role can a left leadership play in this situation?

Few workers have had pay rises to even keep up with the rise in prices. For this reason, members of multiple public sector unions have rejected the pay offers made in local government, to teachers and to civil servants. Andy Burnham’s government is continuing the attempt to cut tens of thousands of jobs in the civil service, and the NHS, school and universities face a huge funding crisis.

Rejection and rhetoric from leaders are not enough, however. The unions need to gear up for a fight. The left majority on the PCS NEC can play a critical role.

Left-led PCS role in 2011

In March 2011, at the beginning of the Tory-LibDem government’s savage austerity programme, the biggest trade union demonstration in British history took place, three-quarters-of-a-million strong, called by the TUC (Trades Union Congress). It laid the basis for a strike of two million public sector workers on 30 November.

At that stage the PCS had a left leadership, both the NEC and general secretary. That meant PCS, alongside other left-led unions, was able to lead the call, putting demands on the TUC to act. It was also able to act as part of a ‘coalition of the willing’, following the March demonstration with a strike in June with the education unions (NUT, ATL and UCU), which helped to build the pressure more widely towards the massive action on 30 November.

PCS potentially could play that role again.

TUC Congress meets 13-16 September. Motion P34 on the agenda is submitted by the PCS. It seeks to challenge the government industrially, by coordinating campaign action, and by demanding the TUC calls a national Saturday demonstration in the Autumn, to mobilise workers against Labour’s austerity and for the funding we need.

Passing this motion at TUC, and mobilising a major campaign in the Autumn, would put enormous pressure on Burnham and the Labour government to offer concessions to workers.

This is not the view of major parts of the leadership of the trade unions, who want to ‘give Burnham time’. Time to do what? Burnham hadn’t promised much to workers.

Fighting for a real lead from PCS

Even getting this motion onto the TUC agenda was a battle within the PCS union. Because although there is a left majority NEC, the general secretary, Fran Heathcote, has not so far wanted to build a national fight that would challenge Burnham’s government.

Socialist Party members on the NEC rewrote a motion proposed by the general secretary, to include concrete proposals for coordinated action and a national demo.

This approach, of delay, of proposing nothing concrete, of shying away from a fight, has been ubiquitous in PCS, especially since 2020 during Covid, when the union’s leadership under Mark Serwotka and Fran Heathcote shelved a national campaign on pay, jobs and pensions in favour of ‘national unity’ with the Tories. During the 2022-23 strike wave, the biggest action in Britain for 30 years, PCS called very little national action and settled prematurely for an inadequate pay offer.

Since Labour won the general election, this determination to go soft on the government, instead of demanding (with industrial action) that the government go soft on our members, is all the more visible.

Since May, Fran Heathcote has tried to derail the newly elected left NEC. Despite the PCS conference and then the NEC agreeing a national campaign back in May, the general secretary published a misleading web article celebrating the 3.5% average pay rise offered by Labour, then collapsed the NEC with a walkout on 11 June. The NEC got back up and running in July, but since then, everything has been a grind.

Despite this, the left-majority NEC remains committed to PCS conference policy of launching a major campaign, including statutory ballot, on pay, pensions, jobs and to fend off the attacks now besetting whole swathes of the civil service, and calls on Fran Heathcote to do the same.

This battle at the top of the PCS matters, so that we can help build the fight in the public sector and working class more widely.

Union coordination

The NEC has instructed the general secretary to contact other unions, and to seek to work through bodies like the TUC’s Public Sector Liaison Group and the TU Coordinating Group of unions. The motion to TUC is the first real effort to do this.

We must appeal to the other unions to join forces – and it is clear that there is something of a mood, with the leadership of the National Education Union being overturned at an executive meeting, under the pressure of the members who want a fight. Members in the University and College Union too are pushing their leaders for a campaign. As well as actively mobilising our members, our left NEC must publicly seek to work with the other unions – even calling a meeting of those who want to fight across the unions.

Political strategy

In addition to preparation to deploy industrial muscle, there must also be a political strategy.

PCS has a parliamentary group of MPs, who get briefings from the union on what’s happening at the coalface of the civil service and in devolved and privatised areas. Some of these ask parliamentary questions on the union’s behalf, to highlight problems or matters about which members care. Some have consistently campaigned for the union’s key demands.

This is important, and we should continue to work with those who support our demands. The NEC could call all those MPs in the parliamentary group, and any others who say they are on our side, to a discussion with the NEC, where we lay out our union’s demands, to ensure we have a parliamentary group that fights for PCS policies. A group like that could voice workers’ struggles in parliament and that would be a step forward in helping Labour MPs to feel the hot breath of workers down the back of their necks.

But that alone won’t get the job done. At PCS conference 2026, in May, delegates agreed that, if the government won’t implement pro-worker policies, including a definitive end to austerity and social programmes like housing that could cut across the rise of the far right, then PCS and other unions should call a conference to discuss the building of a political vehicle for workers.

If the government won’t shift on our demands – including for restoration of lost trade union rights and terms and conditions – they are continuing the austerity agenda. It is clear that Labour cannot protect us from the far right, if they cannot protect workers from the cost-of-living crisis.

We should offer Andy Burnham and Louise Haigh, the new Cabinet Office minister, every opportunity for a serious discussion about how to support half a million civil servants, plus devolved and privatised workers, that work for the government.

But the PCS national executive must gear up members, gird our allies in other unions, and we must fight – industrially and politically. The struggle in PCS against those that obstruct that aim is an essential part of that fight.