PCS Independent Left

A famous politician once said of struggle, “You must be able at each particular moment to find the particular link in the chain which you must grasp with all your might in order to hold the whole chain and to prepare firmly for the transition to the next link.”

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.

Wednesday’s Independent Left bulletin here.

Reps in branches will be aware that members face another crackdown through the people performance procedures, the latest version of the hated PDS which was the result of a national dispute in DWP.  Hundreds, if not thousands, of members have been put on so-called Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs).  These lead to oral and written warnings and eventually dismissal or demotion.  Unlike the attendance management procedures, which have seen thousands of our members dismissed, the people performance procedures can see members sacked once they are moved into formal action theoretically within 8 weeks.  We are aware of cases where the whole membership in a jobcentre will be put on PIPs simply because the office is not meeting its targets.  In one District in London 70% of HEOs are on PIPs and have been instructed to put their staff on PIPs.

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.

Tuesday’s Independent Left Bulletin here.

Independent Left congratulates all those activists and members who made May 10th such a success.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that the strike was well supported by PCS members, not just in DWP but across the Union.  Of course we were never going to meet the high water mark of November 30th with 30 national Unions taking part and mass media coverage.  Given the loss of momentum that occurred through the calling off of March 28th – and we think that was a mistake – the support from members was encouraging.  PCS members have shown, through their 72% support for continuing the campaign and their willingness to strike, that they are sometimes in advance of the leadership and the reps in the branches.  Many will be asking what next and this is a crucial debate we will be having at the national Conference.

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.