On Friday, the GMB announced the result of their statutory strike ballot of members on the DWP G4S contract, which supplies security guards and receptionist facilities to DWP sites.

This ballot is as a consequence of a derisory 2 year pay offer by the company to some of the lowest paid workers in civil service buildings. Namely, 5.15% with effect from 1 December 2022 and 6.5% from 1st April 2023.

The result is a resounding ‘yes’ for strike action on a threshold-busting turnout.

For nearly a year, PCS branches in London have been pushing for the group to ballot G4S members on pay, as well as other demands, laid-out in the NECs recommendation for Facilities Management demands, including demanding joint recognition for PCS. These demands and indicative votes for action took place in a number of DWP branches in London.

Before the announcement of GMB’s ballot, multiple approaches to the National Dispute Committee Secretary was made. The DWP Group were allowed to stonewall the requests. Claiming varyingly that because the union didn’t have many members in regions outside of London and that PCS wasn’t recognised, there would be no point in balloting.

There is some truth in these excuses. The DWP London region of the union have been the only region which has consistently taken up the national unions organising strategy of building industrially in our workplaces and recruiting, representing and organising security guards. This is demonstrated by the fact that of all DWP G4S guards in PCS, nearly half are in London.

Equally, it is true that PCS is currently unrecognised by G4S. But unregognised unions strike all the time, and we rightly have the ambition to be an industrial union, where all who work in our workplaces are in the same union. We also have the ambition for all staff to be brought back in-house, upon which they would be represented by PCS.

The point made by London branches at the time was, If GMB aren’t taking action, and we won’t take any action, then these members essentially have no way to express their agency against a super exploitative employer.

The surprising and out-of-character decision by GMB to ballot their members changed all that.

After the ballot was announced the branches got back in touch with the NDC, outlining the fact that the previous reasons no longer held water (if they ever did) and that PCS were now in the risky position of not balloting our members when the other union were and consequentially could be in a position where some guards had a mandate, and were asked to strike, and ours weren’t.

The Groups response was to hold centralised members meetings (despite some London branches holding well engaged with indicative ballots) and resolving to simply tell the GMB that they will ‘help support them’. Essentially, refusing to allow our members on the contract the ability to vote to join their GMB counterparts in strike action.

Now the GMB result is out, all this has come to pass and we are in the position of either telling our PCS members to join GMB to join any action or potentially our members being asked to cross a GMB picket line.

Either option is shameful and by definition brings PCS into disrepute.

We urge DWP branches to write to the Group expressing discontent with this situation.

Tellingly, motions from London branches to DWP Group conference on this issue, asking for support for these members has been blocked from the agenda, with the standing orders committee not articulating to branches why this is.

Branches who belive in industrial unionism and who support the national unions strategy regarding organising outsourced workers should support reference backs on these motions and any emergency motions which are now submitted.

Members who agree should argue for this in their mandating meetings and vote for an alternative DWP Group leadership in the upcoming National and Group elections.