Left Unity (LU) – the dominant grouping within PCS for the last 20 years – has moved to the right, not only in terms of further bureaucratising the union but also in attacking reps, activists and democratic norms.

Jobs for the boys, on your dime

The General Secretary, without seeking permission from the NEC, reorganised Full Time Officer (FTO) structures. She created more senior management positions at the cost of at least an extra £169K a year, all from your subs. The aim of this new bureaucracy being to insulate them against the non-LU NEC majority. It also created senior positions for the failed candidates in the last 2 AGS elections.

An additional bulwark against democracy is the National President. Acting as an LU partisan, he has misused his powers to rule out of order most motions put forward by the NEC majority. He has paralysed PCS as a result.

Not that LU are worried, because they actually don’t want to do anything, a prime example being the 5% pay remit figure for the UK civil service.

The minority continue to block a campaign on pay

In response to the remit, the NEC majority put forward a motion saying that the 5% was not enough and that we should go back to Ministers asking for more.

Predictably, the President ruled that motion out of order, which meant that the union has not challenged the national remit figure. When the majority challenged the President’s ruling (which requires 2/3rds of NEC members to overturn), all the LU NEC members voted against overturning the ruling. That means they were against challenging the 5% remit figure.

If it is argued that they found other parts of the motion objectionable, why not move amendments to take those out? In any case, why didn’t the General Secretary in the paper to the NEC, just say we reject the 5% and we will ask for more?

She didn’t and the LU don’t, as they are content with the 5%, following as it does off last’s years pay ‘victory’ (as least according to LU).

Hypocrisy in DWP

So we see the deep hypocrisy whereby LU in DWP (who control the unions DWP Group Executive Committee) denounce the pay offer there, saying 5% is not enough, yet on the NEC didn’t challenge the remit!

Put control and power back in the hands of members

To break the deadlock we are in, the NEC majority is urging branches to ask for a Special Delegate Conference (SDC). The aim of the SDC is to pass motions which allow the NEC majority to actually make policy and to restrict the General Secretary to only using such powers as allowed by the constitution.

In response, in the last few days, a joint Branch Bulletin from the GS and President has been issued to branches telling them the ‘true facts’ of what is happening, which is nothing more than LU propaganda. Along with the bulletin, members have been emailed with the ‘truth’ (Pravda), as defined by LU, and members in branches that have passed SDC motions have also been emailed querying the legitimacy of their branches SDC motion.

This shows that LU are panicking but also that they now will use the union machinery to campaign for LU in next year’s NEC election.

We will continue to tell members that their money is being misspent, that LU’s actions mean that the union cannot respond to imposition of pay but also to the staff cuts soon to be announced in the Autumn statement.

Even if an SDC is stopped, we still have our annual conference next year where hopefully there will be a day of reckoning, most importantly LU have to be decisively defeated in the NEC elections, in particular we have to win the President’s position.