Fiona Brittle, PCS National Executive Committee member, personal capacity
At the time of writing, it is almost three months since the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the PCS civil service union, with its left majority, agreed to launch a national cost-of-living campaign at its 29 May meeting.
However, reps and members would be forgiven for not knowing about any campaign, because the general secretary, Fran Heathcote, is not implementing what has been agreed. Decisions of the NEC are being delayed, or simply ignored.
PCS Annual Delegate Conference in May voted for a fighting strategy and to build a serious campaign to tackle pay, protect jobs, sort out the pension crisis, and improve members’ terms and conditions. Almost simultaneously, members voted for a left majority on the NEC, a coalition which includes supporters of the Broad Left Network, in which Socialist Party members participate, not least because it stood on a platform to build that campaign.
Members have now instructed the union leadership to build a serious fight, and to ballot for strike action if there is not enough progress in talks, at three consecutive conferences.
They recognise that is the only way to fight and win our demands against a government still rooted in cuts and passing on austerity to the public and its own employees. Andy Burnham’s ascendency does not mean better pay, jobs protected and the pension crisis solved. No amount of waiting around to see if Burnham delivers will change that. The 3.5% pay remit is still 3.5%. Job cuts are still taking place, and our members in FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) and elsewhere are still bravely fighting on to defeat these in their areas. The pensions crisis with private company Capita goes on, with thousands still suffering hardship, delayed pensions and delayed retirements, with no commitment to bring pensions administration back inhouse. Our offices are still threatened with closure.
The left majority on the NEC remains determined to build and deliver a serious strategy to win. To not do so is a serious betrayal of members’ interests.
We must apply pressure to Burnham to deliver. Many trade union leaders may wish to give Burnham ‘a chance’, but all we have seen so far is yet more ‘machinery of government’ changes for the civil service, and vague announcements about devolution without any guarantee of job protection for our members. Our members can’t afford to wait.
It is clear that general secretary Fran Heathcote and her supporters in the misnamed ‘Left Unity’ grouping, will do everything possible to undermine the national campaign. Far from “holding the employers’ feet to the fire” – her election pledge when she won the general secretary election with a below 800-vote majority – she has done the opposite. Instead, she is covering for a Labour government that does not “respect” civil servants as promised.
Undermining the national campaign
She has not even published the decision of the conference to members – not even that we consider PCS to be in dispute. There is no social media or website announcement, which if done, would have put not only the whole of PCS on a war-footing, but would have sent a very clear message to the employer, just in advance of the publication of their paltry pay remit, that our union was serious about building a campaign for more.
Despite repeated instruction from the NEC, there are no branch briefings to announce the new policy to fight, or advice and information for reps. We have instructed her to provide proposals for giving lay reps access to members’ contact details in order to communicate with them directly. We have agreed members’ meetings and a plan to work with all of our lay structures to build the campaign necessary.
None of that has been done. In fact, when deputy president Dave Semple produced specific website articles to rally members, he was told this was “disrespectful” to the general secretary and that she would arrange communications through the full-time structures – so where are they? There have been multiple social media posts, emails and articles on other issues, but a deafening silence on the national campaign.
As a result, to most reps and members this NEC will look no different than before. This is not an accident. She hopes to make the NEC majority look ineffective, so that members will continue to be disillusioned. She hopes this will keep voter turnout low in the next NEC elections in spring 2027, to increase the odds of returning her allies to power.
Left Unity members have made it clear that they want to see the outcome of pay talks in each employer area before even building for a campaign. This is a nonsense when we already know what the remit is, and that anything above that will only be in exchange for selling off members’ terms and conditions. Even the 3.5% isn’t fully funded, with only the first 2% coming as new money, so departments will have to find the rest from within existing budgets. That means staffing cuts, recruitment freezes, and mounting workloads.
- We need to organise in our branches and groups to apply pressure to the general secretary to implement what has been agreed.
