The General Secretary has claimed in a Tribune article that:

But one of the things that we won was national talks about changing civil service pay structures to deal with low pay and inherent issues.

This is factually untrue.

If you go here you will see that what Cabinet Office Minister really said about what the government’s intends:

“Finally, in looking at the right approach to future reward strategy in the Civil Service, the Government intends to draw on the views of trade unions, including with respect to lower paid staff and how best to encourage greater coherence within the delegated Civil Service structures.“

No matter how you stretch and torture the English language you cannot make the above be the same as ‘we won was national talks about changing civil service pay structures to deal with low pay and inherent issues’.

All the Tories have committed to do, is to listen to the trade unions (draw on our views) about lower paid staff and to our views as to how to best encourage greater coherence. Mark Serwotka has, of course, set those views out many a time – at least we hope he has – but to no effect.

But the leadership has form when it comes to ending pay campaigns while claiming breakthrough talks (but interestingly never a breakthrough on our actual salaries!). He made the same claims of a breakthrough on national pay in 2005 and 2008. In a PCS website posting on 2 December 2008, the leadership announced:

“PCS today announced a breakthrough its pay campaign by reaching a national agreement [it had not!] with the government over pay…money from ‘efficiency savings’ will now be released for pay bargaining…” (it was not)

The PCS online report continued:

 “Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, said ‘This agreement [he never had one] is an important breakthrough [it was a break down of our action]…over the coming weeks and months we will be ensuring [he did not] that this agreement produces better pay for the low paid civil and public servants [it did not!]…” 

And now of course he and his allies are pushing similar lines in 2023. This is a lucky leadership – not many get to achieve three national breakthroughs in 18 years.

The members have not been so lucky, because none of these breakthroughs have added one penny to their ever declining salaries on his watch.

His, and Fran Heathcote’s and Paul O’Connor’s, “get the best deal possible” out of the 2023 pay round, predictably resulted in the great bulk of us once again receiving below inflation awards and the worse pay settlement in the public sector.

They could all have learned lessons from 2005 and 2008. But instead, those of us who have been around long enough, are witnessing a rerun of the leaderships’ long rehearsed tactic of avoiding or withdrawing from a campaign for real money on the table with a promise of talks that are misrepresented to make the winning of more money seem a good prospect.

So why does Fran, Mark and Paul make claims that have no substance?

Partly, because they have no confidence in the union’s ability to win a fight – a lack of confidence. A fear that the Tories can see and smell. So, they wanted out of the 2022 pay fight and to avoid a 2023 pay fight, hence the refusal to submit a national claim, in order to claim “significant concessions” through all the resources of PCS in the runup to the AGS and GS elections.

If Fran Heathcote and Paul O’Connor win, it won’t matter if there are no national talks or talks do not result in significant improvements to, civil service pay structures, coherence issues, and  the incomes of our many low paid members, They will already be in office and with high staff and membership turnover as well as control of PCS Communications, the claims will be forgotten.

The PCS leadership is the union equivalent of Orwell’s ‘Oceania’, in his dystopian novel “1984”, in its exploitation of the concept of ‘unremembering’. The claim of such talks, and their hyping by the leadership, will have served its purpose of persuading some activists and members that we did make a breakthrough and to vote for the LU candidates.

In a membership led trade union the leadership would  publish the timetable and the terms of reference of national pay and jobs talks.

We challenge the General Secretary to do so now, or admit that just as in 2005 and 2008, all you have delivered is spin and hype – and that don’t pay the bills.