Strike pay comes out of the Fighting Fund.

From May last year, members paid the levy into the FF. This raised around £550K each month. Separately, the default 50p per member (which is ringfenced out of regular subs) was also paid in. This brought in over £80K per month.

So since May 2024, from the regular contributions and the additional levy, the Fighting Fund received a total £630K or so a month. PCS has paid out well over £3M in strike pay in the same period!

For the striker, it is hardly going to matter to them whether their strike pay came from the levy or the 50 pence – money is money. And that’s true for the FF. It’s just one account and all the money is deposited into it. To claim as Left Unity do that there is a difference, you have to invent an accounting trick or illusion and divide the FF into two. Into one half goes the levy and into the other goes the 50 pence contributions.

It’s from the ’50 pence bit’ of the FF that it is claimed FM and other strikers are paid, not from the ‘levy bit’. The problem is that the strike pay being paid out is more than the £80K coming in from all those 50 pences. So it is also claimed that money is ‘borrowed’ from the levy half of the FF by the 50 pence half to pay the strikers…

We leave it to you to decide whether this is a way of evading the truth that money is money and the strikers’ pay is actually coming from the levy. Indeed even if you buy into all this accounting engineering, the strikers are being paid from the levy, even if you regard that pay as borrowed money.

This ‘borrowing’ means that the 50 pence half of the FF is increasingly in debt to the levy half. We estimate that the ‘debt’ is now over £1M and rapidly climbing.

In order for LU to maintain the pretence that the levy is not funding the strikes they claim that the debt will eventually be eradicated by transferring money from the General Account – this is where our subs and other income goes into – to the FF. Yet despite the increasing ‘debt’ they have not proposed any transfer of money from the General Account. Which is consistent with the reality that the levy is paying the strikers, and they know it.

IL instigated the debate over pausing and reviewing the levy and our votes were vital in actually getting the levy paused.  We did so even though we knew that the levy was in fact funding the action.

The problem with the levy is that it was unfairly structured and has continually been weaponised by LU. It was clear from the General Secretary’s craven videos and emails to members, openly using her position to attempt to influence the elections for LU, that it was not possible with the levy in place to have a rational discussion as to putting in suitable long term strike funding arrangements. That’s why we did what we did – to replace the temporary levy with a lower level permanent contribution, to minimise the need for any temporary levies in future.

Unlike LU who are deeply unserious, we accept the logic of our position and are in favour of moving money from the General Account to clear the ‘debt’ and also to pay, if necessary, for future action. This will run down the General Account, which is our rainy day money. The alternative is accepting LU accounting that allow the supposed debts to increase. This means LU will have to put a brake on action in order to keep the debts to sustainable levels. That is, they will be trapped by their own fiscal rules.

We know that LU will still claim they stopped the levy, despite the facts, but what they won’t do is propose what should replace it. The General Secretary, working only for LU’s interests and not those of members, has said that branches will be consulted on new strike funding arrangements, and that proposals will be brought to ADC 2026!

That might be OK if the world worked on LU time but in real world we have to urgently put something in place over the next months, in the run up to this year’s pay remit and to prove to the Government and ourselves we are serious about action if (or rather, when) offered a poor deal. IL don’t want to run down the General Account or run up more imaginary so-called ‘debts’. We will seek to work up and implement new proposals ASAP but that won’t happen unless the Coalition for Change slate and our joint platform is voted in for the NEC and for other elections.

LU as shown above are more interested in accounting games than winning for members, so let’s get rid of them and start a building a trade union worthy of the members.