PCS Independent Left

Buried at the back of what should be by now your dog-eared conference booklet you will find motion C345, dealing with full time officer pay and because Conference has discussed the issue within the last two years.  Leaving aside that the issue was discussed more than two years ago, 19th May 2010, we will return to the issue at next year’s conference. The critical point is this: should PCS pay salaries way in excess of what even the highest paid PCS members earn – in fact higher than the salaries paid to over 99% of full time civil servants? Should PCS pay a salary which is 400% of the salary earned by 128,220 civil servants as at March 2009? The PCS leadership would once have said “No!”  But not since their election some ten years ago!

A policy long held by the left in PCS and predecessor unions – that full time officers should be elected and paid wages linked to that of members – has seemingly been abandoned. We must ask ourselves the question – what sort of union movement so we want?  The Independent Left wants a trade union championing membership interests, run by members, and employing elected officials who are in touch with members and who are not lifted to some wonderful lifestyle by the fact of trade union employment.  This policy is not an optional extra and “voluntary donations” are not a substitute – the union needs a wage policy reflecting its philosophy, not a guilt trip on individuals’ sense of conscience (and if you look at the annual accounts you will see that virtually nothing is donated back by the most senior officials). We believe that every step that increases membership control over the union must be fought for.  So we will continue to insist that full time officers should be elected by the members and paid a wage that is more in line with that received by members.

Francis Maude promises to get rid of “poor performers” in the civil service by introducing ‘private-sector-style ranking of workers by ability’. Ideological loons call for the civil service to be cut by 70-90% and outsource “policy advice”- predictably rejected by more rational people who are no friends of PCS. The unvarnished fact, however, is that Ministers and Mandarins are behind a central and determined drive to cut real pay way beyond the pay freeze and the 1% policy (“regional pay”); to worsen non pay terms and conditions and make it easier to dismiss staff. This reality is at the heart of lead motions A131 and A132 on the Personnel Policy Agenda.

The drive to cuts T&Cs also casts a light on a critical aspect of Motion A133, which notes that some departments still do not have a domestic violence policy (and for those who do it is largely a “paper policy”): it is increasingly difficult to get senior management to focus on progressive employment policies as opposed to more punitive policies.

The establishment of “Civil Service Employee Policy” is an attempt to cut HR staff across the civil service by delivering pretty much common terms and conditions whilst maintaining the increasingly hollow, divide and rule, pretence of delegation. CSEP policies reflect minimum legal requirements (Additional Paternity Leave) rather than a commitment to develop best practice and are reactionary in nature, exemplified by its PMR policy. The equality consideration, if the PMR example is anything to by, is risible.

The centrally issued “guideline distribution” figures for box markings is an attempt to make performance ratings across the civil service fit to a curve. Whatever Departmental management teams or the Cabinet Office claim, they want to drive down assessments and ensure that every year a certain percentage of people “fail”, in a world where the bar is set to move higher every year, and to make this easier they have designed a PMR system even less transparent than those we already have.

As well as de-motivating and demoralising staff, this does nothing to address the existing and outrageous problems of discriminatory outcomes with lower ratings being allocated to Black and Minority Ethnic staff, the over 50s, disabled colleagues and those in the lower grades – increasing the prospect of them being disproportionately forced out as a result of sacking and redundancy.

CSEP is the joined up thinking of ministers and mandarins. PCS also needs to be joined up. Groups will need to work together with the NEC to oppose centrally driven, detrimental, changes and the introduction of reactionary procedures. The NEC needs to show a great deal more leadership in coordinating groups; in providing timely, legally supported, critiques of CSEP policy; in shaping CSEP’ priorities – they ought to be challenged to introduce best practice policies on issues such as domestic violence. The fight to defend and improve terms and conditions has to be tied to a PCS Programme for Equality. Support A132, A132 AND A133 for the widest possible campaign.

Friday’s Independent Left Bulletin here.

Thursday’s Independent Left bulletin here.

A GILDED AGE FOR THE üBER RICH

Britain was already one of the most unequal countries in the developed world but we have had two years of the Tory led coalition presenting a crisis of capitalism as a crisis of public expenditure and seizing the excuse to finish Thatcher’s work.  The best-off 1% of the British population now takes home a greater share of national income than at any time since directly after the First World War (Danny Dorling, “The case for austerity among the rich”). We are truly back to a “gilded age” for the über rich.

INEQUALITY AND EMPLOYMENT

Yet, as Dorling points out and contrary to the myth that allowing the rich to get richer creates jobs, employment levels in Britain were at their highest between 1945 and 1979, when the richest 1% had their lowest shares of national income. We don’t need austerity – we need social equality.

INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL ILLS

Grotesque inequality marks Britain like a severe burn:  a ground breaking study has shown that the more unequal a society the greater the social ills, such as sickness levels, mental illness, low life expectancy, low levels of social trust, lower and more unequal levels of educational attainment, and a higher crime rate (Wilkinson and Pickett, “The Spirit Level”).

Chronic inequality is reflected in all important social measurements. In February 2010 a Government commissioned report (“Fair Society, Healthy Lives”), led by Professor Marmot found,

“… a social gradient in health – the lower a person’s social position, the worse his or her health…Health inequalities result from social inequalities…Inequalities in health arise because of inequalities in society – in the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age…Taking action to reduce inequalities in health does not require a separate health agenda, but action across the whole of society”

INEQUALITY AND THE CIVIL SERVICE

Inequality and the associated ills is deeply embedded in the civil service: in the disproportionate representation of “junior” and ethnic minority staff in misconduct, poor performance, and poor attendance cases; in the differential award by grade, ethnicity, and disability of performance box markings and PRP; in the gender pay gap; and in the low pay presided over by senior officials pulling down £150-200k pa and huge bonuses.

The Whitehall Studies, a long term health study of civil servants, show that sick and death rates in the civil service are in sharp inverse ratio to grade: “our” Perm Secs (and “our” SoS) will be pulling down their huge pensions a lot longer than most of us will “enjoy” our shrinking pensions.

A PCS & LABOUR MOVEMENT EQUALITY CAMPAIGN

Yet this core inequality in our very lives is not reflected in a coherent, national, NEC led programme on issues such as ill-health policies and sick leave trigger points. PCS lacks a national equality campaign that spreads best practice, ensures the equality checking of all personnel policies, robustly and legally challenges management failings. It is time to put that right.

PCS members struggling to make ends meet will never enjoy equality of treatment in the workplace and their children will never enjoy “equality of opportunity” in an unequal society.  PCS should lead the fight for a visible, vibrant labour movement campaign to reverse the decades of growing inequality. A clarion call for equality has the potential to unite public and private sector workers, employed and unemployed.

NOW IS THE TIME!

Working people in Greece and France have shown that they have had enough of austerity – they don’t want to pay for the crimes of others and the failure of a system which is not theirs. Even the recent local government elections show that the Coalition’s austerity programme is rejected by huge swathes of the population even if that rejection is not manifested in a radical alternative. The time is right for the trade unions – irrespective of their affiliation or non-affiliation to Labour – to make the case for a sharp reversal of a level of inequality that our parents and grand parents thought had come to an end in a “post-war settlement.”

Support Motions A127 and A129!