Katrine Williams, PCS member
The PCS union’s executive meeting in January called a national one-day strike on 1 February. The strike will coordinate with the first day of national action by the National Education Union, and coincide with a day of action called by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), against austerity and further anti-strike legislation threatened by the Tories. Aslef is also striking on this day and there may be others.
On 7 November, PCS secured a historic mandate for over 100,000 civil service members to take strike action in support of our 2022 pay claim, in defence of jobs, and other issues.
The union’s leadership announced a programme of selective strikes which started in mid-December and are continuing. But no plans were made at that stage for calling out all members with a mandate in national strike action of the sort being taken by other unions. Calls for a strategy capable of winning, including national action, made by the PCS left group Broad Left Network (BLN – in which the Socialist Party participates) were ignored.
Socialist Party members in PCS welcome the 1 February strike, and will continue to work tirelessly in the weeks ahead to make the strike a huge success.
BLN conference
On Saturday 14 January, the BLN held a successful conference of activists from all parts of the union.
The conference sent solidarity and support to all strikers across the movement and, in particular, to PCS members who had been on strike, including those present at the conference.
It welcomed the decision to call a national strike on 1 February, but made clear this should not be a one-off isolated piece of national action.
The conference called for a major escalation of the action taken by the union. Central to this must be a programme of national all-member strikes, supported by selective (targeted) strikes and action short of strikes. The message from the conference was the urgent need for a strike strategy that can win our demands.
The union’s current strike mandate runs out on 7 May and the BLN conference agreed this should be renewed with a fresh statutory ballot no later than 7 April if our demands are not met.
Membership control of our pay and jobs dispute is vital, which is why the BLN conference called for a special union conference to be held mid-March to review progress and strategy.
An emergency motion called on the TUC to “… prepare for the maximum coordinated industrial action, up to and including a 24-hour general strike, if the Tory government moves to implement new anti-union laws and restrictions”.
A range of other issues were discussed at the conference including tax justice, no to privatisation and outsourcing, and the steps needed to ensure trans equality.
Sheila Caffrey, who is on the National Education Union executive committee and part of that union’s left group Education Solidarity Network, brought a message of support to the conference. Sheila anticipated that her union would win its statutory strike ballot and looked forward to sharing picket lines with PCS members.
The need to have a union leadership that can face up to the attacks of the Tories and their civil service bosses, unlike the current ‘Left Unity’ leadership, was a consistent theme running through conference deliberations. The BLN approach, and candidates to fight the 2023 union elections, were agreed.
PCS Driving Standards Agency strike
A striking driving examiner in the south west spoke to the Socialist
We’re striking because we put our lives at risk every day, and yet we’re not rewarded and haven’t been for a long time. One of my colleagues found an old pay slip from 14 years ago and it showed that our pay has only gone up 76p in all that time.
One of our members spent November and December ‘eBaying’ their stuff just to be able to afford Christmas.
We’ve only recently had a 5p increase in our fuel allowance, despite how much that has gone up in recent months, and we’re still overpaying into our pension fund, which the government doesn’t seem too quick to want to bring back in line.
After more than a decade of pay freezes, our members have rejected the 2% pay rise we’ve been offered. We are calling for a 10% pay rise as well as a £15-an-hour minimum wage rate. We smashed the anti-trade union 50% turnout threshold, with 92% voting in favour of strike action across the DVSA (Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency), which shows the strength of feeling on it.
Support from the public has been great, and practically every driving instructor has shown their support, beeping as they go by. We would certainly be in favour of seeing coordinated strike action across the different unions taking strike action.
