Under the guise of updating branches on the national campaign and the PCS Fighting Fund, the General Secretary and President published a factional and misleading account (BB-22-26) ahead of the National Executive Committee elections. The article below sets the PCS Independent Left’s position regarding the Fighting Fund. We will comment separately about BB-22-26’s misleading report of national bargaining and the national campaign.
Background to the PCS IL current approach to the Fighting Fund
For two decades before the 2022/23 national PCS pay dispute the PCS IL had called for the building of a financial war chest to fund selective action alongside national action. We found little support amongst the various would-be left wing groups for either selective action or a financial war chest, including the two Left Unity members who put their name to BB-22-26.
Presiding over the ever declining real wages of PCS members, the Left Unity leadership changed its mind in 2022, without explanation, from its previous hostility to selective action (they favoured once in a blue moon one day strikes) to a national strategy almost wholly based upon selective action, one without meaningful national strike action.
However, the Left Unity leadership obviously found PCS lacking the funds to support selective action. So, post the national 2022 ballot, without any prior consultation with members or conference, they imposed a levy on members to fund the national campaign. The PCS Independent Left does not conduct itself in the outrageously factionalised manner of the authors of BB-22-26 – a level of factionalism which is damaging to PCS members. We therefore supported the belated levy of all members.
Although under LU’s misleadership the 2022/23 national pay campaign failed to achieve a single one of PCS’ national demands, it demonstrated what we had long argued – and the authors of BB-22-26 and their allies took an exceedingly long time to learn – the need for a financial war chest to fund selective action (but alongside meaningful national action).
Strengthen the Fighting Fund, Protect Members’ Money
It is in the context of this historic position that the PCS Independent Left has long advocated strengthening the Fighting Fund. Currently, supplementary rule 3.13(d) mandates that all members will pay an additional 50p on top of their monthly subscription, ringfenced for the fighting fund. It is not enough, and the union has had to resort to temporary levies when national campaign-based targeted action needs to be supported.
Setting this out more clearly, according to the 2025 Finance Report, the 50p per month raises approximately £1m per year, by contrast in 2024– with next-to-no national campaign strike action- PCS spent £2.7m on strike pay. In 2023, at the height of the national campaign, we spent £6.76m on strike pay.
It is clear therefore that even just to support local disputes, let alone a sustained national campaign, reform to the Fighting Fund is needed to increase the amount of money earmarked for this purpose out of members subscriptions, which will also help reduce the need to use temporary levies for all but exceptional circumstances.
Last year the Independent Left brought A444 to conference to seek to ringfence at least 10% of all member subscriptions for the Fighting Fund, to remove the ringfence on previous levy income in the Fighting Fund and to see if any of the union’s surpluses could sustainably be transferred to the fighting fund. The motion was only “A marked” (i.e. placed on the primary agenda for debate) thanks to the moving branch winning a reference back on the conference floor against the recommendation of the Left Unity controlled SOC, which subsequently chose not to put the motion in general debate with other Fighting Fund related motions (notably A85/A86). This act, and the manner in which the President chaired conference, meant that A444 was not heard or debated.
Based on the 2025 Finance Report, A444, if heard and passed, would have resulted in approximately £2.9m being earmarked for the Fighting Fund in 2025 at minimum, triple what the current 50p per month has generated.
However, the situation has changed with the real threat of a Reform Government in future. PCS must now build a bigger war chest not only to help our fight to reverse the fall in our real wages and to resist potentially substantial job losses, but also to help fund resistance to a possible Trump-inspired Reform government. The situation has been made more pressing by the Left Unity NEC’s decision to refund previous levy income. More funding is therefore needed for the Fighting Fund than ever before, and it cannot all come from existing sources.
Motions A85/A86
ADC 2025 did pass motions A85/A86, which instructed the NEC to hold a consultation on the Fighting Fund ‘with a view to replacing the current flat rate 50p from members monthly subscriptions paid directly into the general Fighting Fund with an appropriate percentage figure that will generate a long term regular growth in income to the Fighting Fund’.
This would require a rule change, and therefore need to command a 2/3rds majority on the conference floor.
Talks with Left Unity
In December 2025, seven months after ADC, IL was approached by a Senior Full Time Official, on behalf of the General Secretary, to see if it would be possible to reach agreement on a position that might command a 2/3 majority at ADC. We agreed to talk in good faith but we were aware that the NEC had not consulted members and branches about the future funding of the Fighting Fund. When we met, the senior official was accompanied by the National President Martin Cavanagh, representing Left Unity. Their focus was entirely on their – Left Unity’s – proposal for the Fighting Fund (to our knowledge, at this stage the NEC itself had not discussed how it would implement A85/A86’s requirement for consultation over the Fighting Fund or any precise percentage figure).
Their proposal was that SR 3.14(d) be amended so that the 50p fighting fund contribution was replaced by an additional contribution of between 15% or 20% of a member’s subscription rate on top of the base subscription. This was to commence, if backed by ADC, on 1 January 2027.
We raised two key points:
- We should be ringfencing a percentage of total member subscriptions (from subs, levies etc) for the Fighting Fund, not just putting on a higher additional amount to subscription rates. Indicatively, this could be 15%. A ringfence would ensure that the proportion of all subscriptions revenue (including any levies) would be earmarked for this purpose and could not be diverted elsewhere, while also not ruling out ad hoc diverting of additional union general funds into the Fighting Fund where expedient to do so.
- We should be making sure there is no way we can find additional funds for the Fighting Fund from savings elsewhere in the union before relying on increasing subscriptions income alone. We were extremely dubious that a single leap increase in membership dues would be well received by members, and certainly not by the DWP members sitting on minimum wage under LUs leadership.
In our most recent correspondence with the Left Unity representatives we also highlighted that for the purposes of ADC 2021 motion A9 (which caps staff pay costs at 33% of member subscriptions), the PCS annual financial reports assume ‘staff pay costs’ means salaries but excludes linked costs such as employer NI, employer pension contributions and pension deficit contributions. We asked Left Unity’s representatives to consider whether this approach really met ADC’s requirement of a 33% cap on staff pay costs or whether it is a loophole being used to exceed the cap and hire additional staff- FTE headcount went up by 5.6% from 2022 to 2024 alone, c.10 additional members of staff. We suggested ‘staff pay costs’ should be defined as being total staffing costs (excluding pension deficit contributions). The union would then need to seek to limit staffing costs over the medium term to make savings.
An alternative approach to making savings would be the union looking to limit other non-staffing costs. For example, the union currently spends £1.4m per year on ‘computer running costs’, equivalent to £8000 per PCS member of staff.
We recognised some of the additional money to make a 15% of total subscriptions ringfence for the Fighting Fund work would likely need to come from increased subscription income, and we made that clear to them in our reply.
Using 2025 forecasting, the conclusion to our suggestion (and we were clear, it was just an illustrative suggestion) was:
- A subscription rate 9% higher than the 2025 level (not 15% or 20% higher).
- 15% subscription ringfence of this higher amount = £4.7m (enough to support many local disputes in a year without a sustained national campaign, while building funds for years where there will be a national campaign).
- Total additional amount raised from increased subscriptions level: £2.6m
- Total staffing expenditure allowed under our tighter definition above: £10.4m
- Total staffing expenditure forecast in 2025: £12.6m
- Savings from new staffing definition: £2.2m
- Total increased income plus savings = £4.8m – compared to a 15% ringfence of £4.7m.
In our response we went on to say that “…the increase in Fighting Fund contributions would be made up of approximately 55% from subscription increases and 45% from savings elsewhere in the union (whether staffing costs, non-staffing costs or a combination of the two). We think it is likely that such an approach could achieve member buy-in more easily than one that was solely based on an increase in member subscriptions.
This is not us saying that we will necessarily oppose whatever motions come forward to conference, we would determine our position based on the merits of the proposals and are not wedded to a specific formula. But we wanted to make clear that there are a range of options in our view and members and reps should be exploring all of them in an open and democratic way”.
Concern for Democracy and Leadership Abuses
The response we received to this suggestion was not one made in good faith, it was childish hyperbole suggesting that we were suggesting cutting union running costs by ludicrous amounts that the logic of our reply never suggested was the case (as you can read for yourselves above). We note that the General Secretary, without securing the permission of the 2024 NEC (which constitutionally has the power to “Engage and discharge Full-time Officers, determine their pay and terms and conditions of employment, and enter into any agreement with them it considers appropriate”), created a new PCS staffing and grading structure which included the creation of a new highly paid senior grade, with two new posts within it that were filled internally, and recruited externally for other posts. This is precisely an example of expenditure that the IL (and the then NEC in our view) would not have authorised. By contrast, it is telling that Left Unity believes there is no scope at all for savings elsewhere in the union to limit any increase in subscriptions for the Fighting Fund.
We agreed to talks despite only being contacted in December 2025, which suggested Left Unity’s desire was either to use urgency to secure a fait accompli or belatedly to present IL with a pseudo proposal for a hike in membership dues as the only way to fund a sustainable Fighting Fund, without any internal savings and even any search for internal savings, a proposal that Left Unity knew we would not agree to.
Worse than this, the same logic has now been put into BB 22-26, a use of official union communications for nakedly factional purposes as we go into elections season. It is not a decision for the moving branches of A85/A86 as to whether consultation with members was desirable or not, the motion required it and blaming the collapse of factional talks as the reason not to consult members and reps is not good enough.
We made clear to the Left Unity representatives that there was no reason not to consult all reps and members on proposals as they were being developed. Reaching out to a few groups and then telling the members it would not be worth the effort of consulting them because of the feedback of these groups (according to their interpretation of the feedback from said groups) represents an abdication of responsibility and a repudiation of the authority and decision of ADC.
The proposals we were shown also raised serious concerns about Left Unity’s commitment to a national campaign. Left Unity intended their Fighting Fund proposal to be implemented in January 2027 (assuming for the moment that they were ever serious about putting their proposal to conference), which would leave the Fighting Fund short of money in 2026, indicating that their strategy for this year is capitulation to our employers, and leave precious little time to build up funds for a campaign in 2027 or that they were being dishonest by omitting the need for a new levy until then.
The BB contains a clear threat that any Fighting Fund reform will be carried out the Left Unity way or not at all. At worst, this could mean that they are not interested in creating a sustainable basis for the Fighting Fund full stop. The BB states that they will not bring motions themselves to ADC because losing a vote would be “leaving us unable to revisit the matter for three years in accordance with the National Standing Orders”. It is worrying that no full time officer, the NEC, the General Secretary nor the Standing Orders Committee picked up that this was incorrect. Appendix A, SO A34 of the PCS Rulebook states that one of the categories of motion is “Motions which seek to reverse policy as determined at Conference within the last 2 years” not three years.
It is also unpersuasive for the BB to assert that the loss of a Left Unity proposal to change PCS rules (i.e. to hike membership dues as the only way to fund the Fighting Fund) would mean that any different proposal to change the same PCS rule could not be heard for three (sic) years: the extant rule would remain as it was, it would not change. If a proposal to change a policy or rule is voted down by conference, that surely cannot be conference ‘making new policy’, as opposed to rejecting the proposed changes to the existing policy. Using a pseudo-constitutional argument to avoid complying with A85/A86 is yet another example of contempt for lay members and reps.
The IL view remains unchanged. PCS needs to strengthen the Fighting Fund but we will not apologise for seeking to minimise the impact of doing so on members’ pay packets. We are open to how this is done and are not wedded to any one formula. Any members or reps who wish to speak to us about this further are welcomed to contact us. We will not allow threats to abuse the PCS rules to prevent us from making proposals if we think they are needed and the time is right.