From John Pearson:

Sofia Azam and John Pearson attended the PCS Headquarters building on Tuesday 2 December 2014, in order to lobby members of the union’s NEC which was meeting on that date. We understood that reports were going to the meeting on the respective negative decisions of the National Disputes Committee (NDC) on our two applications for support in our legal cases.

While we were present, the union’s Vice President, Kevin McHugh, came out to talk to us. He informed us that, in respect of both of our cases, if we were to meet the General Secretary and President to discuss the issues raised, then the NDC’s decisions would be reviewed.

At Kevin’s request, we both promptly confirmed in writing to Mark Serwotka’s office manager, our willingness to meet Messrs. Serwotka and Godrich, even though we regarded this action as superfluous. John had already confirmed in writing to Mark Serwotka on two previous occasions – 24 October and 11 November – his acceptance of Mark’s offer of a meeting, and Sofia had done likewise – on 24 October and 7 November. No replies were received by either of us to offer any dates for an appointment and this remains the situation, one week after the NEC meeting.

We are thus forced to consider whether the Vice-President was being used by the union’s most senior officials to carry out a ‘body swerve’, in order to forestall any possibility of the NEC overturning the NDC decisions.

The public campaign of Sofia and John will continue.

We are continuing to lobby support from other PCS branches and from PCS members and other trade unionists via social media. Crucially, it is important to get more signatures on the open letter, whether or not Mark Serwotka and Janice Godrich are telling the truth about being prepared to meet us and offer any meeting dates. The open letter is at :

http://pcssupportyourmembers.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/open-letter-to-mark-serwotka/