Conference and the Mood for Change
ADC 2026 marks a significant shift for PCS members and reps.
Following our success as part of the Coalition for Change in the NEC elections, ADC has now given Independent Left members on the NEC a resounding mandate to change the direction of the union and put the fight for members’ pay, jobs and conditions first.
Members did not vote for more drift, delay or top-down control. They voted for a union that will fight, organise and trust its own members. Conference showed that members want PCS to become a more fighting, democratic and member-led union.
That means a leadership prepared both to listen and to lead: to communicate more openly, to draw on the experience of members and reps, and to turn conference decisions into visible action in every part of the union.
The National Campaign Members Need
Members deserve a serious, credible plan built by members in every workplace.
IL were essential in drafting the core demands of the overwhelmingly agreed national campaign motion, which broke from recent years of drift and set out a strategy that matches the scale of the crisis facing PCS members. Civil service pay has been driven down over many years, progression has withered away, and delegated bargaining has left members on the same grade paid differently across the service, with too many AA, AO and EO colleagues effectively trapped at or near the legal minimum.
Members are being asked to do more for less, while the old leadership of the union has too often failed to match the scale of the attack with the scale of response needed.
This motion called for:
- A fully consolidated 10% pay increase, following pay restoration to 2008 levels, a return to pay progression, an £18ph minimum wage within the Civil Service.
- Upwards harmonisation on sick pay and annual leave, a 4-day week, and a job security agreement.
- The insourcing of all outsourced work.
- “Our Work, Our Way” campaign material to show members what maximum control over their working lives could look like, and why we should fight hard for it.
Just as importantly, the motion was not only a list of demands but a practical plan. It instructed the NEC to submit the claim immediately, prepare the union for a major national campaign, reach out to other public sector unions about coordinated pressure and action, hold members’ meetings across PCS, and move to a national strike ballot by the end of September if talks do not deliver sufficient progress. That is a serious timetable, and members should soon be able to see and lead the campaign for themselves.
And members are right to make such bold demands of the Government. After years of falling real pay, the hollowing out of progression, insecurity, rising workload, office attendance mandates, and outsourcing, members have had enough. Even a slightly improved pay remit will not repair more than a decade of decline on its own, nor will it solve the structural problems created by delegated pay, grade compression, and the lack of any reliable route for members to move up the scale.
PCS needs a genuine national campaign, rooted in workplaces and branches, with members properly informed and involved at every stage, and with a clear long-term aim of restoring national bargaining across the civil service, alongside a strategy to bring outsourced work back in-house.
Trans Liberation and Conference Democracy
On trans rights in particular, conference exposed a deeper problem in how PCS democracy has been handled. Motions on this issue were once again blocked from the agenda, with branches denied the chance to have their arguments properly heard. But in the end pressure from delegates and activists forced through a single emergency motion in defence of trans liberation which passed overwhelmingly.
That mattered both because it sent a clear message of solidarity to trans members and because it showed conference could be trusted to decide the issue for itself.
Conference also voted by a clear majority to narrow the rule that had been used to block such motions, but sadly because it was a rule change it fell short of the two-thirds threshold needed to carry. This underlined again that equality, solidarity and democracy are not side issues in PCS but part of the union we need to build.
Refounding PCS
There will no doubt be a fight in the year ahead for the soul of PCS. The new, left majority National Executive Committee will face resistance from a well entrenched bureaucracy and from those who have grown used to power being concentrated at the top of the union. But the argument here is not about personalities. It is about whether PCS is run in a way that trusts members and reps, gives them the information and resources they need, and breaks with the top-down habits that have held the union back.
Too often in recent years, conference decisions have been diluted, ignored or delayed. Refounding PCS means making sure members can see, in practice, that their decisions matter and that their union belongs to them.
The mandate from the elections and from conference should now allow that work to begin. That means improving democracy and communication, giving branches, groups, regions and reps more of the tools they need to organise on the ground, and being willing to confront the wider attacks members are facing on workload, hybrid working, rota changes, office closures, AI and job cuts, as well as on pay. It also means ending the culture of members being treated as spectators, and replacing it with a union that expects members to shape the fight and carry it forward.
What Members Should Expect Next
Over the coming weeks and months, members should expect to see clear action briefings, offering support in holding meetings workplace by workplace to build for the year ahead; greater support for reps; and an end to top down direction.
Members should also expect a more honest approach about what it will take to win: not vague optimism, but serious organising and proper preparation for action. Equality must sit at the heart of that work too, with stronger backing for reps and members dealing with discrimination and a clear commitment that no part of our union will be left to fight alone.
Conference has set the direction. Now Independent Left members on the NEC will deliver.
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