Breaking through Again and Again – and yet Again!

In an earlier posting we said we would get back to the claim of Martin Cavanagh, the Deputy Vice President, that the leadership’s strategy had forced the government to talk about pay cohesion for the ‘first time in over a quarter of a century’.

If the leadership take 25 years to get into talks – with no promise of meaningful change after another below inflation pay year – then we need a new leadership. But the claim is untrue even its own terms.

If you read the 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/2023 pay remits (Cabinet Office instructions to bargaining units regarding the annual pay round) you will see that pay coherence is referenced. For example, 2019/20 states,

“Cabinet Office ministers have valued engagement with trade unions on this year’s process.”

“Coherence: Proposals may take into account wider Civil Service context and, if departments decide it is appropriate for them they may look towards more consistent approaches on common issues. In particular business cases could look at where historic divergence between departments makes reward systems more complex, less agile, less fair to employees and less value overall to the taxpayer.”

We assume that our national representatives do talk about pay coherence when meeting Cabinet Office officials and Ministers about pay remits. If they don’t, then we definitely need a new leadership.

More substantially though, both in 2005 and 2008 the then union leadership, with Mark Serwotka at the fore, claimed that it made the same breakthrough as it has this year!

In 2005 the PCS leadership said, “We have persuaded the Government to introduce a fairer, more coherent pay system…” The truth was that the government of the time had no intention of introducing a “fairer, more coherent” pay system and it did not do so. Just three years later the r the then leadership, with Mark Serwotka to the fore, claimed that the NEC had “Achieved the first national pay negotiations in 15 years to address massive inequalities in pay.”

The statement was untrue. The leadership had conducted years of fruitless “national pay framework” and “pay coherence” talks before 2008. Indeed, it is a mystery as to how the then leadership, with Mark Serwotka once again at the fore, managed to persuade the government in 2005 to introduce a “fairer, more coherent pay system”, if in 2008 they were achieving the first national pay negotiations to address pay inequalities in 15 years.

Of course, people can make bad mistakes (including misleading members), learn the lessons, and move on. But here we are and the same type of spin comes rolling out from the Left Unity/’Fran & Paul’ leadership.

So you will see that three times in the last 25 years the national union has claimed the same breakthrough. Each time there was nothing.

We leave you therefore with what we wrote in 2008 regarding the 2005 breakthrough – what we said then still stands now:

“The lack of detail at the time showed that the PCS leadership either knew the Government was not so persuaded or it genuinely believed its own hype but had no idea what it had persuaded the Government to do!“

Martin, withdraw your bizarre and misleading claim!