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.

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.

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!

Our task this week is to determine the next link in the chain of the national dispute and to pull as hard as we can to move to the next link. That means abandoning the present tactic and approach of the Left Unity leadership of the union; the tactic of the isolated one day strike. This method of fighting is not new to the PCS and has been used, and found severely wanting, in previous disputes as it has in this one. That is why, in an emergency motion, the Independent left (IL) suggests a new way forward.

Firstly, we must remember that members voted to take industrial action on pay and jobs as well as pensions. The pay and jobs part of the dispute has been ignored to date by the NEC, though no doubt for the purpose of this conference, there will be mention of them. In reality though the union has concentrated wholly on the pension’s front; believing that this is the glue to hold a coalition of unions together. Of course this particular glue has not managed to bind Unison, the NUT and other unions to us.

Therefore the IL wants to give the defence of jobs and pay as much prominence as pensions; we believe that this maximises the prospect of mobilising members and allows the union to actually fight on these three vitally important issues. Whilst we do want to build the widest possible alliance with other unions we must be prepared to fight on PCS issues and on our own if necessary – the alternative is to let the fake left leadership of the likes of the NUT and plain in your face right wingers like Dave Prentis determine the pace and tactics of the dispute. The more we fight, the more pressure we will place on the likes of the Unison and NUT leadership.

The stale one-day-strike-at a five month time tactic has to be abandoned. In its place we want as much all-members’ action as members will support, coupled with paid selective action in the key parts of the union. We want to look at alternative methods of taking action; for example the DWP contact centres could be taken out for one day, followed by jobcentres for one day and then the benefit centres for a day; taking out each in succession would increase the chaos caused. This attack on the “production line” was used with success by CWU in a Royal Mail strike a few years ago. It could, and should, be replicated in many parts of PCS.

Lastly we need clarity from the leadership as to what they want from any talks from the government. The IL does not want to preserve schemes where those recruited after 2007 have a pension age of 65 (this age agreed by the current leadership), top civil servants having payouts of a 100K plus whilst paying the same contributions as an AA. We want a pension age of 60 for all; regardless of when they were recruited.

To win we have to move the dispute on and move away from the current tactic of a strike every five months. Members facing job loss, members facing pay cuts, and all of us facing pension loss – we are all in one battle: to stop the government making us pay the price of the financial crisis. Let us together grasp the chain and move to the next link.

Of course as a Union we need to do everything we can to defend members through personal cases, grievances etc.  And of course we need to ensure that our reps are fully briefed on the procedures so that they can deal with these cases.  We also need to ensure that comprehensive guidance is issued to members and reps.  But we also need to understand the collective nature of attack.  Just like attendance management this is all about cutting jobs on the cheap.  Therefore this attack needs to be subject to a dispute.  We should include demands around attendance management and people performance as part of any action we may have in the Group.

For example we could include demands around increasing the consideration point, disregarding all disability related sickness for the purpose of warnings and scrapping the backsliding rules.

Pay

Our living standards have been eroded over a number of years now with pay failing to keep pace with prices, which have risen by 22.6% since 2005.  Of course this is going to get worse with the coalition’s policy of restricting increases in the public sector to 1% for the next two years.  This gives us another opportunity to build our own coalition of the willing.  We should seek to make cause with as many other public sector Unions that are prepared to have a fight over pay.

We also need to submit a pay claim in DWP that seriously addresses the steep decline in members’ living standards.

We have always said that members were balloted on Pay and Jobs, as well as Pensions.  The current dispute has concentrated too much on the Pensions issue.  This is because the leadership see this as the glue that keeps our coalition together.  We think that bringing in the other issues is important too, one because members have voted for this and two because a pension is no good to you if you don’t have a job and, of course, your pension is based on what you earn.  In short pensions are simply deferred pay.

Pay is increasingly becoming the major issue for members as they struggle to make ends meet and cope with increased pension contributions.  Since 2005 prices, according to the RPI, have increased by 22.6%.  Yet the AO max (national) has only risen by 11.8%.  For EOs in the national area it’s even worse.  The max has only risen by 6.2%.  The government’s pay restraint of capping increases at 1% over the next two years has the potential to unite the public sector unions again.

We have always said that we are in favour of the maximum unity with other unions but not at the cost of PCS fighting on behalf of its members.  We have a responsibility to fight, ideally with as many other unions that we can make common cause with, but on our own if needs be.

We need a strategy to win.  We don’t think one day strikes punctuated by months of inactivity will win our dispute.  Firstly we need as much national action as members can bear but alongside this we need other forms of action, such as overtime bans and paid, selective action in areas that will hurt the employer.  We support the immediate launching of a voluntary levy to support this.  Secondly we need to have a notion of what we mean by winning.

Welfare reform

The GEC needs to launch a campaign against the government’s welfare reform programme which will see even more scapegoating of claimants as well as the privatisation of our jobs.  The Government and the management are trying to foster an ‘us and them’ attitude.  We should not fall for it.  When it comes to workers within DWP and the unemployed workers who use our services we really are all in this together.  Whilst DWP denies there are any targets for DMA and sanctions those of us who work I Jobcentres know of the relentless pressure by managers to sanction more and more claimants.

The Coalition have introduced a benefit cap of £26,000 at the same time as scrapping the top rate 50p tax rate.  Osborne claimed in the House of Commons that the top rate of tax raised next to nothing for the exchequer.  Even if we assume he is correct the same argument can be applied to the benefit cap.  Of the millions of people that claim benefits the number of families whose income from benefits exceeds £26,000 a year can be counted in the tens of thousands.  In other words it saves next to nothing for the exchequer.  The reason for introducing it is ideological.  If nothing else exposes the vicious nature of the attack that the working class are facing then it is this.  They are determined to make the working, and in some cases middle, classes pay for an economic crisis that we did not create.  Public schoolboy bullies kicking the weakest just about sums them up.

Contact centres

This dispute has been dragging on for far too long, with far too little action and far too little concessions from the employer.  Our members in Contact Centres need to be treated with respect, and not just by the employer.  We have submitted motions to the Group Conference calling on the GEC to urgently re-convene a Contact Centre reps meeting to discuss the campaign and agree the next steps needed to up the pace of industrial action.  We would ask delegates to support motions that put this campaign back on track.