Vote ‘No’ in the consultation

Elect Marion Lloyd as a campaigning PCS General Secretary

Dave Semple, PCS branch secretary Wigan, personal capacity

The PCS civil service union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) met 12-13 July and agreed to 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 (BLN) supporters on the NEC, along with Independent Left (IL) members, voted in opposition to these proposals, insisting that the NEC must carry out its mandate.

Our view is very simple. The PCS national campaign must continue – there is more to be won!

Annual Delegate Conference (ADC) 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 (for when there is redundancy) and to demand a jobs guarantee. In addition, the NEC speaker at the 2023 conference gave a commitment to the demand put forward by the BLN, for an inflation-proof increase for 2023-24.

As we stand, very little of this has been achieved.

Members will have suffered an average real-terms pay cut in the last two years of approximately 10%. 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.

As recently as May 2023, the NEC won a renewed mandate for strike action in an all-members ballot. ADC also instructed the NEC to reballot DWP, which just missed the threshold.

Despite this, when news broke in June that the government would offer a £1,500 non-consolidated, pro-rata, one-off lump sum payment to Westminster civil servants, president Fran Heathcote and her NEC allies immediately suspended strike action, including calling off in-progress strikes in the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, and called off the reballots.

The ‘Left Unity’ leadership argued that we now needed to see what departments would offer, so they voted for pay bargaining to begin department by department. They knew that would not entail departments offering inflation-proof rises, as pay across all Westminster areas is constrained by the Treasury insistence that average pay rises live within a cap of 4.5%.

That is why this fight is a national one, with the Tory government.

Outgoing general secretary Mark Serwotka called the 4.5% cap “insulting”. Yet it is precisely with this cap still firmly in place that Serwotka’s choice to succeed him as general secretary, Fran Heathcote, wants to declare victory.

The leadership is now balloting members from 3-31 August. The ballot is not on whether the pay ‘offer’ is enough, but is on whether or not members “endorse the NEC strategy”. Many members will ask, “what strategy?!”

Members should vote to continue the campaign by voting ‘No’ in the ballot.

Change the leadership

It is clear that a change of leadership is needed. BLN supporters have endorsed Marion Lloyd as our candidate for PCS general secretary, and have agreed a joint platform with IL members to support incumbent Assistant General Secretary, John Moloney.

The statement by PCS BLN and IL says:

“The announcements from the NEC majority to try to end the campaign to improve our pay, protect jobs and defend pensions demonstrate how urgent it is to change the leadership of PCS.

“It is now crucial we build activity and support to mount a serious and meaningful challenge to beat the leadership’s candidates, Fran Heathcote and Paul O’Connor – neither of whom have the inclination nor the capability to build and deliver the necessary campaign to win on jobs, pay, pensions, office closures.

“Our candidates stand on a programme which will, working with members and reps, rebuild the union into the campaigning body that members deserve… We can win more!”