PCS Independent Left

With another but potentially far wider  cross public sector strike looming, now is the time for the NEC to launch a campaign for social equality and reach out to students, the retired, the service users, the unemployed and private sector workers.

The Labour movement needs politics!  A Tax Justice campaign is fine as far as it goes but we need far more – a reassertion of the old Labour Movement striving for a fundamental shift in wealth and power. In a grotesquely unequal Britain the fight for equality, including the fight to place the burden of the economic crisis on the rich, is a critical element in renovating the British Labour Movement.

Britain is one of the most socio-economically unequal countries in the developed world and that inequality is reflected in the civil service and impacts heavily and detrimentally upon PCS members.

The Independent Left has played a unique and highly significant role in trying to raise equality up the PCS agenda, in a way that:

• would be central to PCS’ industrial and political campaigning;

• would tie the different equality strands into a coherent equality programme;

• recognises that the vast inequalities within the civil and public sector reflect even greater inequalities in the private sector (affecting our private sector members) and wider society;

•  appreciates that socio-economic inequality – class exploitation and inequality – underpins and meshes with gender, race and other inequalitie
• Points to fundamental political change as well as industrial challenges.

Unfortunately the NEC did nothing on the key PCS Independent Left equality motion passed at the 2009 Conference (insert link) and has done precious little on 2010’s key equality motion (insert link), which was also moved by IL supporters and which instructed the NEC to tie all membership equality issues into a cohesive, national, campaign that has the need for social equality at its core, that draws out the connection between workplace and wider society inequalities, and places equality at the heart of all PCS’s campaigns. But better late than never – the NEC should now act on these Conference decisions.

Motion A47, drawn up and moved by IL supporters and unanimously endorsed by 2009 PCS National Delegate Conference but fundamentally not acted on by the NEC

This Conference notes that inequality and unequal treatment have a profound effect upon the working lives of civil and public sector PCS members by grade, ethnicity, gender and disability as exemplified by the following facts:

(a) The disproportionate representation of “junior” grade staff in misconduct, poor performance, and poor attendance cases;

(b) The disproportionate representation of ethnic minority civil servants in “personal cases”;
(c) the differential award by grade and ethnicity of performance box markings and therefore of performance related pay;
(d) the differential award and value of special performance bonuses by grade;
(e) the high percentage of SCS receiving substantial bonuses, and the size of those bonuses, compared to the percentage of junior grade staff PRP or bonuses;

(f) the gender pay gap;
(g) differential access to learning and development opportunities and the differential amounts of money spent on formal training by grade;

(h) The sharp relationship between civil service grade and morbidity and mortality rates;
(i) The unwillingness of departments to amend policies that would impact differentially and detrimentally on certain groups of staff (such as PRP, absence management trigger points that hit “junior grade” staff and to treat equality proofing seriously as something that requires action to prevent differential treatment).

2) Conference further notes that:
(a) Ministers and mandarins are essentially indifferent to these and a myriad other inequalities that touch so deeply on the working and personal lives of our members.

(b) These inequalities mirror inequalities in wider society, including those affecting PCS members in the private sector.

3) Conference believes that a vigorous and imaginative national campaign, feeding into the Groups and National branches and designed to address positively the inequalities suffered by our members, must be a major priority for PCS over the coming years.

4) Conference therefore instructs the NEC to design and launch such a campaign before the end of 2009 and ensure that this campaign:

• promotes and spreads best equality and diversity practice throughout the areas where PCS has members;
• promotes the timely and proper undertaking of Equality Impact Analyses of all management proposals affecting staff and ensures that union representatives are suitably training to undertake EqIA themselves;
• results in representatives being suitably trained to insist on the application of equality legislation laws and to challenge under this if necessary;
• keeps representatives abreast of developing equality case law;
• keeps representatives and members informed of the links between inequalities in and out of the workplace;
• ensures that grade is a key factor in all employer equality proofing and EqIA exercises;
• challenges social inequality as well as promoting “equality of opportunity”;
• seeks positive alternatives to current employer policies, such as PRP, and employer practices, such as disciplining junior grades whilst turning a blind eye to unacceptable behaviour by senior managers;
• challenges Ministers to deliver on equality in their own workplaces rather than just lecturing everybody else;
• identifies areas of poor practice or several specific equality problems and, working with the GEC or national branch, seeks urgent improvement and redress;
• seeks agreement with Cabinet Office on strengthened delegation rules which meaningfully require departments to comply with their equality obligations;
• periodically presents to the Cabinet Office examples of poor practice drawn from particular areas of the Civil Service and a wider picture of poor practice across the Civil Service and seeks centrally driven remedial action;
• presents a detailed report on the campaign to next year’s conference.

Motion A14, drawn up IL supporters, unanimously endorsed by 2009 PCS National Delegate Conference Conference, but fundamentally not acted on by the NEC

This conference notes:

• the comprehensive and persuasive findings set out by Professors Wilkinson and Pickett in their book “The Spirit Level”, showing that more equal societies – those with a narrower gap between rich and poor – are more cohesive, healthier, suffer fewer social problems and are more environmentally sustainable;
• that the UK is a deeply unequal society, characterised by a wide and deep range of social problems and this inequality affects PCS members irrespective of whether they work in the civil and public or private sectors;
• that, as an example, the Whitehall Studies found that morbidity and mortality rates in the civil service are in sharp inverse ratio to grade.
• Taking into account the overwhelming scientific evidence of the ill effects of inequality (in terms of morbidity and mortality rates, well being, crime, social trust and other social factors) this conference recognised that need to campaign for a radically more equal Britain, and that that begins, but is not confined to, our work as trade unionists representing large numbers of low paid workers.

Therefore, this conference instructs the NEC to:

• Invite Professors Wilkinson and Pickett to present their findings to a national PCS forum to which representatives from the bargaining units will be invited to (such a forum could discuss other union business as well);
• Invite Professors Wilkinson and Picket to present their findings to an official conference fringe meeting during ADC 2011;
• discuss with the Equality Trust (founded by Professors Wilkinson and Pickett to promulgate their ideas and to campaign for a more equal society), other trade unions, and labour movement figures such as John McDonnell MP, how we might work together to forge a radically more equal Britain and take joint initiatives to this end;
• To encourage awareness amongst branches and members of the importance of the findings set out in “The Spirit Level” (e.g. by sending out suitable branch briefings; with permission reproducing material from the Equality Trust onto the PSC website);
• To campaign within the civil and public sector for policies that seek to redress the effects of inequality on our members;
• To support those campaigns that seek a more equal society in terms of income distribution.
• The Independent Left believes that PCS should develop a Programme for Equality Action, in full consultation with members, and make the fight for that programme a critical  aspect of its industrial and political campaigning. This programme could be easily adapted  for PCS’ private sector members.

THE INDEPENDENT LEFT’S PROGRAMME FOR EQUALITY ACTION

• Address the huge socio-economic inequalities within the civil service and public service, the gulf in income and pensions between the lowest and highest paid civil servants:
• Establish a much narrower and defined relationship between the salary of the highest paid full time civil servant and that of the lowest paid full time civil servant. The chiefs should not be receiving between 20 and 25 times more than the lowest members of staff.
• Cap the pensions and pension lump sums payable to the mandarins -  On retirement in 2007 Sir Richard Mottram, former head of DWP, received a tax-free pension lump sum of £335,000 and an annual pension of more than £110,000 from his salary of £225,000 a year.
• Establish a minimum income in the civil and related public sector of no less than 2/3rds male median earnings in the wider British economy, with a view to establishing a higher figure in the longer term.
• End the obscenity of SCS bonuses.
• End performance related pay, which discriminates by grade; ethnicity; gender; full-time/part-time working; non-disabled/disabled.
• For a national pay system that ends the wild and arbitrary variations in pay between members in the same grade but working in different “bargaining units”.
• Address the disproportionate representation of ethnic minority, disabled, and lower grade staff in PCS “personal cases.”
• Spread equality best practice, for instance on flexible working, Ability Passports, and gender reassignment.
• Ensure the equality checking of personnel policies and enforces members’ legal rights.
• Adjust absence policies so that they address the significant differences in morbidity and life expectancy rates between different grades of civil and public servant.
• End the two tier pension schemes that forces NUVOS scheme members to work until 65.