At yesterday’s NEC meeting, members of the Independent Left voted to ‘pause’ the levy for the Civil Service national campaign dispute. Since last summer we have consistently argued to review and reduce the levy ahead of a permanent solution to make sure the Fighting Fund remained healthy and able to support action by members.

Instead, Fran Heathcote and Martin Cavanagh have repeatedly and deliberately failed to allow the NEC majority position (to review and reduce the levy) to be enacted, for the cynical political gain of their faction, Left Unity.

What is the levy?

The previous, LU controlled, NEC introduced the current levy in May 2024, as they prepared for an industrial action ballot over civil service pay. It was set at £5 a month for members earning £26,001 or more and £3 a month for members earning £26,000 or less.

At the time, the NEC explained that the ‘small’ levy, ‘is in effect a solidarity levy that creates a fund for those who would not otherwise be able to afford to strike’.

LU take a kicking

That ballot did not fare well. Members were understandably disillusioned after LU threw away the previous year’s dispute for the lowest pay increase in the public sector, and a taxable, non-consolidated (one-off) £1,500 bung, on which Mark Serwotka didn’t even have the sense to request an equality impact assessment before agreeing to the employer.

They did not do the organisational work in the intervening period, instead focusing the union’s communications on defending their actions, and beginning a PR campaign for Fran Heathcote and Paul O’Connor’s General and Assistant General Secretary run. As a result, while 62 employers, representing 19,160 members, crossed the 50% threshold in the recent ballot, another remaining 109 areas did not cross the threshold, representing 127,800 members.

As a result, members voted for a (slim) majority of Coalition for Change candidates at the NEC elections, and a restive ADC 2024 threw out LU’s tired industrial strategy and adopted motion A315. A315 further instructed the NEC to immediately plan for targeted action in areas, as well as preparing for re-ballots.

Action denied

IL and other C4C members on the incoming NEC were excited to help implement this strategy, but we have been blocked at every turn. Leverage submissions sent in by many branches with mandates, keen to exert pressure to win our demands, were submitted at the beginning of June 2024. They were sat on, finally shown to the Nations Disputes Committee by Heathcote weeks later. By this point (August) the General Election, which lay reps knew was the perfect time to exert political pressure on Labour, had been and gone. There was little leverage to be had now that a government with a gigantic majority were calling the shots. Action, desired by reps and the C4C majority of the NEC, was denied by Heathcote and her LU clique. At the same NE meeting, the General Secretary said she believed that we should ‘welcome the significant concessions’ the government had provided (an unfunded ~5% award that was worse than most of the public sector, again) and therefore end the national dispute, and the levy. The C4C disagreed, we wanted to build, prepare for a new ballot, and win more – and we believed we needed the levy to keep the Fighting Fund prepared for this campaign.

The C4C wanted to review and reduce the levy. At the 5th July NEC we agreed the General Secretary’s recommendation ‘that the NEC considers whether or not the levy should continue and agrees a way forward’. As of yet, we have not been given the opportunity to have that conversation, or been allowed to move or vote on our alternative strategy. LU have made it clear that our options were either that we pause (end) the levy for their political gain, or continue it for their political gain. If the levy continued, they would spin it as members’ money being needlessly stockpiled with no action to justify it, and if the levy ended they would spin it as an LU victory over the coalition.

IL’s alternative

We have tried again and again to plot a rational course on the levy.

In August, as the General Secretary recommended that we accept the 5% remit and abandon the campaign, we attempted to move an alternative strategy which included the levy’s immediate reduction, followed by further consultation with members about its future. Cavanagh ruled this motion out, due to his (erroneous) belief that NEC members having alternative or amended recommendations to the General Secretary contravenes the NEC’s standing orders – essentially resulting in frequent ‘our way or nothing’ ultimatums from Fran to the NEC. In November, again, our attempt to reduce and review the levy was blocked by Cavanagh when we tried to propose it.

We want to have a sustainable fighting fund, a war chest for the dispute over the 2025 pay remit we know is coming. But we know £3 or £5 a month is a lot for some people, and that it has become an issue (in no small part because LU have talked about nothing else for six months). We’ve been trying to get this on the right track since we took our seats on the NEC. But faced with a General Secretary, a President, and a cadre of senior LU FTOs bent on wrecking, we have now decided that enough is enough. Members should not have to cough up more because a group of belligerent bureaucrats are determined to take their ball home with them if they don’t get to set the rules, nor should they be left in limbo as LU weaponise this in the absence of having anything practical to say about what the PCS should be doing to win for members under this new, underwhelming government.

Building a fighting fund to win

How will we pay for disputes now the levy’s ended?

There is nearly £3 million in the levy fund currently, which would be enough to cover a limited civil service dispute, should this arise.

As we have related though, the general Fighting Fund is in deficit after funding our courageous Facilities Management comrades in their various disputes. We’ve heard varying reports about what’s going on with these funds – FTOs have said that the levy is ‘lending’ money to other disputes at various meetings, although we hasten to add that this was categorically denied by the General Secretary and others at an NEC meeting. Comrades in HMRC were apparently told they might have to find funds themselves for a strike around the sacked reps at Benton Park View, although that seems to have been a misunderstanding.

However, the Fighting Fund more generally does have reserves which can be used to support our ongoing disputes, and there is a healthy surplus of cash in the general fund. Given that the first object of the PCS rulebook is to ‘protect and promote the interests of its members’, we hope that Heathcote would not think twice about supplementing the Fighting Fund with general funds should these disputes need more cash – something all sides should support.

Going forward

At the December NEC, again we tried to resolve this situation but again we were blocked by Cavanagh, of course.

We proposed that the General Secretary bring to the next NEC modelling on options for a reduced levy, including an option for collecting the levy as a percentage of members’ subs rates. The outcomes from the NEC discussion should form the basis of motions to go to Conference ’25.
And bring to the next NEC (15 January 2025) a draft consultation with Groups and branches on redesigning how we collect money for the national campaign and wider fighting fund, to ensure that we are prepared for future disputes of any nature without relying on temporary levies.
At the same time, Heathcote proposed a pause and said there was no time prior to ADC for either a consultation or to prepare a new model of building the fighting fund. Perhaps, given the significant salary bump she got on election, she has some holidays planned?

The IL think hers is a ridiculous position to take, and we will address it. We think that there is no better consultative mechanism than members attending their AGMs, attending their mandating meetings, and sending their delegates to ADC with an instruction to back a new approach.
With that in mind, we will prepare motions for ADC 2025 which seeks to revise supplementary rule 3.14(d) of the union (which mandates that an additional 50p per member per month be collected for the Fighting Fund) so that a percentage of a member’s subscription rate is collected instead, if they are in a recognised workplace.

We will suggest to ADC that this rate be set at 10% of a recognised member’s subscription. This would vastly reduce the amount members pay compared to the levy – even the ~6% of members on a band A subscription rate, for the highest earners, would pay £2.10 per month – our lowest paid members would actually pay less than they currently do to the Fighting Fund, 49 pence. All told, this change would raise approximately £2.7m per annum for the Fighting Fund. This would sustainably, and progressively, build a reserve to fund action, and as a consequence reduce the need for any temporary levies in future.

If you want this – then support our motion in your branches and on the conference floor.

The decision facing members in the 2025 NEC elections

No doubt, you will have heard Left Unity’s clarion call to “pause the levy!”, and their criticisms of the IL and the rest of the Coalition for Change for not supporting Heathcote, thus bringing ‘chaos’.

But what vision of the union do Left Unity offer as an alternative? A capitulation. Without a sustainable Fighting Fund there is no flexibility to support action where we have leverage. While the old levy did need replacing, they offer no positive vision of how they would support action going forward. Left Unity cares more about being in charge than they do about representing PCS members and making our union an effective vehicle for change. Read their election statements – with the levy gone, they say almost nothing. They offer even less.

To meet the challenges of the second half of this decade, PCS needs to change its way. It needs to be a more agile, open, and democratic union. It needs to empower lay reps at branch level to pursue creative disputes that speak to their membership, with the cash to back them up. It needs to organise digital and data workers, security guards and cleaners who can be the backbone of this union.

The Independent Left, alongside our comrades in the Coalition for Change, have plans to make these changes. They have been frustrated again and again this year by a General Secretary and President who act, first and foremost, in the interests of their faction, rather than the membership.

To begin to undo this, members must elect a president, and a sizeable majority of ordinary members to the NEC in 2025 from the Coalition for Change, so that the committee can function as it was intended to and force the General Secretary to actually act on the decisions of the majority of the union’s governing body and the mandate they were elected on, as opposed to doing what best suits the preservation of Left Unity.

If you want a fighting, democratic union, please consider nominating and voting for us. If you want to be more involved in developing our policies, consider joining IL.