Passport office PCS strike in Liverpool
Passport office PCS strike in Liverpool

Join with us for a fighting PCS and pay campaign

Dave Semple, PCS vice president, personal capacity

Within hours of the conclusion of the PCS union’s National Executive Committee (NEC) on 14 February, memes, a video from the general secretary and an all-members email had gone out proclaiming the ‘good news’, that the union’s strike levy had been scrapped.

In reality, this is not good news at all. All PCS Broad Left Network (BLN) supporters at the NEC meeting voted against the termination of the levy, as did two independent socialists. We believe that the levy continues to be necessary if we are serious about winning a good deal for members on pay, conditions like hybrid working, and on reversing job cuts.

The levy was originally introduced by the previous NEC, which was dominated by the misnamed ‘Left Unity’ grouping, of which general secretary Fran Heathcote and national president Martin Cavanagh are a part. They lost their majority on the NEC in last year’s union elections. Since July, the new NEC majority (which includes the BLN) has proposed that the levy should be immediately reduced for the lowest-paid PCS members, and reviewed to ensure it is effective. But that has been deliberately ignored by the general secretary and president.

Heathcote has no plan to fight

January and February’s NEC meetings demonstrate Heathcote and Cavanagh have no plan to fight in 2025, and by ending the levy have telegraphed that to a hostile set of employers – be it Starmer and Reeves’s Labour government and its Westminster departments, agencies, or devolved areas.

At the January NEC meeting, the general secretary had put forward zero recommendations following discussions on pay with the employer. BLN supporters put forward the need for a campaign.

As well as little movement on pay, job cuts are proceeding in Westminster departments, and a major dispute of outsourced staff against their behemoth employers continues to rage – despite Angela Rayner’s promise to be the most in-sourcing government for a generation.

With no excuse to rule the campaign motion out (which is what the president usually does to everything put forward by the NEC majority), Cavanagh and his supporters backed it and promptly began acting like they had proposed it themselves.

But then only one instruction in the motion – for NEC Liaison Officers to consult every area – was acted on. The other steps agreed, such as the production of materials and basic preparation to put the union on a war footing, have been ignored.

Nothing has been done to start readying PCS for a pivotal next few months, in which, among other things, the government will publish the Civil Service Pay Remit for 2025-26. Reeves has already indicated that pay rises will be 2.8%, about half of last year’s inadequate offer.

NEC majority proposes next steps

There are eight BLN supporters, four independent socialists, and seven supporters of the Independent Left (IL) group, that make up the majority left coalition on the NEC (the Socialist Party is part of the BLN). We met to discuss feedback from the areas we liaise with and concluded that more work had to be done by the leadership to give our reps and members confidence that a struggle could win.

The basic elements necessarily include national all members’ strike action, supplemented by paid strike action targeting areas which put enormous pressure on the ordinary functioning of the government. Such an approach is not new, but it requires millions of pounds to ensure that members who asked to go on strike can cover their bills.

On this basis, a motion – which can be read in full at bln.org.uk – was proposed by the NEC majority to the February NEC meeting. We also repeated our call to immediately reduce the levy for the lowest-paid and review it.

Cavanagh, as president, vetoed the motion.

Independent Left mistake on the levy

But then IL members demanded that a vote be taken to revisit the question of suspending the strike levy.

IL supporters are an integral part of the NEC majority left coalition which defeated Left Unity in the May 2024 NEC elections, and which is standing again in the forthcoming elections. But we do not agree with their decision to seek the end of the levy. 

For us it’s a question about what the union needs to do to win a victory for members? We do not have the same resources as we had at the end of 2022, which supported the targeted action in the strike wave.

There is also significant paid action taking place by our outsourced members, as well as localised and group strikes. The union’s fighting fund is in overdraft, yet the general secretary and national president argue that this is somehow separate. A levy makes up the difference and more.

Unfortunately, IL’s mistake gave Cavanagh and Heathcote sufficient votes to terminate the levy – without having to answer the question, what way forward to a serious campaign in 2025?

Agreement on need for a fighting leadership 

The BLN will continue to make the case for a coherent strategy that can win the support of thousands of PCS reps across all bargaining units, and behind which can be mobilised hundreds of thousands of civil servants, outsourced workers and workers in arm’s length bodies.

While we may differ with IL on what some of those tactics might be and how they might be funded, we remain in basic agreement that any serious campaign requires the voting out of Cavanagh and Heathcote, their Left Unity supporters, and their blocking tactics.

It is for this reason that we are putting forward Marion Lloyd for president and a united slate of left candidates in the PCS elections to lead the union and build this campaign, to re-establish a fighting, democratic PCS.