Many PCS representatives are encouraging members to No vote in the current national ballot whilst continuing to represent members both individually and collectively in what is a challenging and demanding period. But soon we will be entering the election period for Assistant General Secretary (AGS) and General Secretary (GS).

Both elections brought forward from their constitutional periods and timed to enhance the election prospects of the failed Left Unity leadership that has presided over years of decline in our pay, terms, and conditions. A leadership currently busying themselves demobilising the national dispute on the basis of the lowest pay offer in the public sector.

Representatives and members should draw the conclusion of their deep disappointment in the national LU leadership’s dire conduct throughout our dispute and vote for John Moloney for AGS and Marion Lloyd for GS.

In mid-July, in line with the decisions of Independent Left (IL) and Broad Left Network (BLN) membership meetings, IL and BLN agreed a positive, principled, programmatic basis for a joint campaign to secure the re-election of John Moloney as the PCS Assistant General Secretary and the election of Marion Lloyd as General Secretary. 

Our agreement was prompted by the pressing need for a change in the leadership of PCS, a need which has become even more apparent in the time that has since elapsed.

For months, the primary activity of the Left Unity national leadership has been the derailment, and the public justification of the derailment, of the PCS national campaign on pay and job security.

For example:

• Having denounced the 2023-24 pay remit in April, because it obviously meant another year of sub inflation awards, the Left Unity leadership discovered in June that it was a ‘significant concession’. They switched from stating the truth about the Tories pay cutting remit to making propaganda for it!
  
  
• Leading Left Unity NEC members based in DWP who, as NEC members, now see what they did not see in April – that the 2023-24 pay cutting remit is not a significant concession – have decided to reject, as DWP Group Executive members, the predictably dreadful, below inflation DWP offer that is based on that same pay cutting remit.

The alternative – consistent with their original claim that the remit was a significant concession – would have required them to flog a real value pay cuts to DWP members in the runup to the AGS and GS elections.

• The Left Unity leadership welcomed and publicly boosted the Government’s decision – in response to the action of PCS members – to allow civil service bodies to pay a highly restricted, non-pensionable, £1,500 lump sum on a pro rata basis. They publicly accepted that the £1,500 should be paid pro rata, without any equality concerns, despite its obvious adverse impact on the many thousands of predominantly female, often low paid, part time members, even though the lump sum was not conditional on PCS’ acceptance, and despite it not being a salary award but a one-off payment, purportedly made “in recognition of the pressures of inflation.”
  
  
• They did not give a moment’s thought as to the real terms value of a one-off payment that would be paid pro rata and further reduced by government clawbacks through tax, NI, reductions in Universal Credit, cessation of free school meals, and increased repayment of student loans.
  
  
• The Left Unity leadership has become the only trade union leadership in the pay revolts that have swept the country, to ballot on an “NEC strategy” rather than the pay announcement on the table. A fact which speaks volumes as to the worth of their “strategy.”
  
  
• They do so on the stunningly misleading recommendation that to vote Yes is to “Continue the Campaign”, whilst ceasing all national and selective/targeted strike action, ensuring that PCS will not be able to fund much in the way of selective/targeted action, by removing the strike levy and failing to state in membership bulletins that in reality it is a “No” vote that would mean the continuation of our dispute.

The whole approach and behaviour of the Left Unity/bureaucratic leadership is designed to cement their control over PCS at the expense of the vital interests of PCS members.

The cynical ‘strategy’ has been to stop all action in support of our pay and job security demands and conduct faux consultation with branches while the lapse of time sucks the life out of our dispute.

Then conduct a misleading membership consultation ballot on an utterly misleading and confusing basis, further depriving the dispute of oxygen.

And finally, aim to obtain a majority vote over the holiday season in time to dump the dispute (while still pretending to be continuing it) thereby make way for the AGS and GS elections on the false fighting slogan that, “we are still in dispute!”.

It is impossible to identify a more cynical national betrayal of membership interests in the history of PCS. It is our job to try to keep the national dispute alive, despite the leadership, and to prevent them from reinforcing their national control of PCS.

Ensure that your branches book GS and AGS nomination meetings now; nominate John Moloney and Marion Llyod; turn out the vote for them; turn out the Left Unity leadership!

It is time for a change.

Nominate, campaign and vote for Marion Lloyd and John Moloney for General and Assistant General Secretary