Democratic debate essential
Dave Semple, PCS Wigan branch secretary, personal capacity
Reps from the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, representing 180,000 civil servants for the UK and devolved governments, as well as workers on privatised contracts for central government, met for their Annual Delegate Conference (ADC) in Brighton from 23 to 25 May.
Convened amid significant strike action across the union, over pay, pensions, redundancy rights, and jobs, and less than a week after the surprise announcement that the General Secretary Mark Serwotka was to retire, ADC debated the union’s national strategy, as well as key democratic issues for the union.
What way forward for our national campaign?
Socialist Party members have mobilised for and support all our members in strike action. However, in our view, the union leadership (a coalition known as ‘Democracy Alliance’, in which the ‘Left Unity’ grouping plays a leading role) has mishandled the union’s campaign since the mandate for strike action was first won on 7 November.
No national action was called until 1 February, and then only three days of national action in the first six months of the campaign. In reality, these were only called as a result of the immense pressure the union leadership was put under from members. Broad Left Network (BLN) supporters, the rank-and-file socialist group in the union in which the Socialist Party participates, fought for a serious campaign of national action at all levels of the union, including on the national executive. The leadership also did not ballot on action short of strikes.
Judging from the content of speeches at the conference, there was a broad unity in favour of escalation of the national campaign. Many delegates, even those voting for the motion proposed by the National Executive Committee (NEC), queried the lack of sustained national strike action, and the lack of any serious approach to industrial action short of strike action.
Socialist Party members and BLN supporters highlighted the role that an overtime ban or a work to rule could play, in magnifying the impact of strikes and limiting the employer’s ability to mitigate the impact of strike action. This point simply was not answered in debate, in favour of calls for ‘unity’ around the leaders of the union.
Nothing was heard from the NEC about coordination with our sister civil service unions, Prospect and FDA, both of which have successfully balloted for strike action. Prospect has implemented an overtime ban, affecting specialist grades in the civil service.
The PCS leadership has concentrated on selective action as its central strategy, where small groups are paid by the union to take extended periods of up to a month of strike action. It is not impossible, in a pre-election year, with the government under enormous pressure, that selective strike action might wring concessions from them. But in a battle of this scale the best way to apply maximum pressure is with serious and escalating national strike action, overtime bans, and refusing to allow the moving of strike work between sites. The PCS leadership has not learned this lesson, but members will.
Leadership wants to avoid debate and accountability
On several key votes, the leadership had their way – including on the call by the national executive to launch a consultation on moving away from annual, all-member elections in favour of longer terms of election, and breaking the union’s national executive up into smaller constituencies. This was vigorously opposed by left delegates at the conference as these measures would reduce the ability of members to hold the leadership to account and campaign to replace them when necessary.
Socialist Party and BLN members supported a motion to extend elections, so that any directly employed officer of PCS who exercises significant control over how the union operates should be elected by members. There were other motions arguing that full-time officer pay (i.e. the pay of PCS employees) should be linked to the pay of members of the union. Opposed by the leadership, these motions were lost.
A debate on LGBTQ+ rights at conference saw the leadership decisively defeated. After an unnecessary card vote called by the president, over 70,000 votes were cast against an NEC motion that would have deprived ‘PCS Proud’ – set up by and for LGBTQ+ PCS members – of its semi-autonomous status and changed it to that of other equality forums within the union. In reality these organisational changes were proposed by the leadership in order to limit political opposition. Passage of PCS Proud’s own motion, A293, was the third censure motion on LGBTQ+ issues this leadership has received from conference in the last six years.
Drama ensued on the final morning of ADC 2023, when WhatsApp messages from PCS national president Fran Heathcote were revealed to the conference. The president had privately urged supporters to unnecessarily prolong a particular debate, in order to delay the agenda and prevent later motions – especially Motion A50 – from being heard. Motion A50 tackled head-on the decision by the NEC to refuse to accept the nomination by PCS Proud of a delegate to the TUC LGBT+ Committee.
Despite such underhand manipulations, Motion A50 made it into the final guillotine section at conference and was passed decisively, to raucous cheers from angry delegates.
Political strategy
Other motions were not so lucky, including all of the motions discussing the union’s political strategy. They were crammed into a very small part of the agenda and thus did not get heard. Again, the union leadership was deliberately avoiding serious political debate that would challenge their positions.
Successful socialist fringe meetings
Both the Socialist Party fringe meeting on Tuesday night and the BLN fringe meeting on Wednesday had around 50 in attendance. Fraternal debates were had about how to continue rebuilding a genuine socialist left in PCS. This is a crucial step to rebuilding a fighting, democratic and socialist trade union that plays its full role in the struggle of workers against the ruling class of capitalists.
General secretary election: A question of democracy
When Mark Serwotka announced his retirement as PCS general secretary publicly on the Thursday before conference convened, it was clear that this was in order to use conference to launch the campaigns of his preferred successors – current president Fran Heathcote for general secretary (GS) and Paul O’Connor for assistant general secretary (AGS).
Limited though they are, the democratic structures of PCS Left Unity, which is the organisation that mobilises behind the current leadership, were simply bypassed.
Serwotka used his speech moving the union’s annual report to publicly back Fran Heathcote as his successor for GS. This was criticised from the rostrum by Socialist Party members and BLN supporters.
Unprecedented
Fran Heathcote did a speaking tour of the different employer groups holding their own specific conferences.
In an unprecedented move, Paul O’Connor was given a motion to move at the main conference on behalf of the NEC – the first time in PCS history that an unelected direct employee of PCS has moved a resolution.
Serwotka and his NEC supporters have organised the elections for GS and AGS for winter 2023. This is out of alignment with the NEC elections, which happen from April to May every year. Socialist Party members and others put up emergency motions calling for the NEC’s timetable for the GS and AGS elections to be changed.
Organisationally and financially it makes sense to run the elections at the same time, especially as a winter election may coincide with reballots for further strikes after expiry of the next six months of strike mandate.
Aligning these elections is opposed by the current leadership for the laughable reason that members would be “confused”.
Most importantly, this is a democratic question: the elections should happen at the same time so that members elect the leadership as a whole.The Socialist Party believes there should be a fighting left challenge to the current Left Unity-led leadership in the GS and AGS elections.
