George Osborne’s semi thaw of the pay freeze (1% average pay increases for the next two years) condemns millions of public sector workers to further cuts in living standards on top of those already suffered in past years.

In a motion passed at our recent AGM the Independent Left agreed that:

This conference notes that although pay is one of the three demands, along with pensions and job cuts, that members were balloted on, in reality no effective campaigning concerning this demand has been undertaken by the PCS.

This despite the fact that inflation is eating into member’s real standards of living, we have had a pay freeze for two years and we still have delegated pay. Therefore the objective conditions for an effective campaign exists.

It is now vital that we start a pay campaign. Not that this will be easy as our motion recognised:

That said this conference recognises that the lack of a national pay campaign for many years; the fact that PCS has not in effect even asked for national pay bargaining in the last years and the possibly wide spread feeling “well at least I have a job” make the task of effective pay campaigning very difficult.

In a later posting we will set out our ideas as to how such a campaign can be fought.