This week has seen the first week of action by PCS G4S guards on the DWP contract since the result of the ballot last month.
The strike has been coordinated with the GMB and has seen big, vibrant picket lines that have caused significant disruption to the running of the Departments operations.
We congratulate all G4S strikers for taking this historic action. Never on the outsourced contract has such strike action been seen, and this has put both G4S and DWP on notice.
The disgraceful pay offer by the employer would put these workers, who protect civil servants at work, on barely the minimum wage.
DWP management are also complicit. They want G4S staff wages to remain low to keep the contract costs down and have refused to intervene to support the staff that keep its offices safe and open.
Once again, the workers who create the wealth for multinational leaches like G4S are demonstrating that without them, their business stops.
While this dispute is about pay, we know our members have many other demands and grievances which are very widely felt.
For example, disgracefully, G4S staff don’t get sick pay from day one, have a much longer working week than civil servants as well as a smaller annual leave entitlement. We need to fight minimally for parity with civil servants, which were the demands London G4S members wanted to fight on, but were previously blocked by the unions DWP Group.
Ultimately though, the real solution to these inefficient contracts is to bring the work in-house, stop these multinational crooks creaming off profit from the public and treating its workers like garbage and gain union recognition for PCS.
DWP Group slow to act
As we have written before, the DWP Group have been very slow to support these workers. IL supporters in London who have been central to ensuring that half of all PCS members on the contract are in the capital, have been arguing for months for a ballot and for it to include demands in addition to pay as discussed above.
We are happy that we held a successful ballot and that our members have risen to the challenge and been solid throughout this week of action. However…
An almighty cock-up
The DWP Group Executive has failed to serve the proper notice on G4S for the next round of strikes.
The National Disputes Committee (NDC) agreed that we would coordinate our strikes with the GMB for the 3 weeks commencing 17th June, 1st July and 15th July.
We were made aware yesterday that the DWP Group has not served notice for the 1st of July strike. Unbelievably, it appears that they were unaware they were legally required to provide 14 days’ notice of action to the employer!
Coalition for Change, of which PCS Independent Left is a proud part, members of the National Disputes Committee stepped-in to raise this as a matter of urgency, and managsed to get notice issued for the Thursday and Friday of that week – the only days which were still narrowly within the timescales.
What this means is that despite being told they would, PCS members now do not have official backing to act on the first 3 days of the next week of the strike.
This is a serious error by the DWP Group Executive and clearly brings the Group and national union into disrepute, but more importantly, it directly undermines the dispute itself.
We need urgent answers from the Group regarding how members will be told about this failure and how the group will be supporting them if they wish to take solidarity action with the GMB on the first 3 days of the next strike week.
Huge opportunities
Despite this, thanks to the quick action of the Coalition for Change NDC members, our members will still be on strike on the 4th and 5th of July, the day of and the day after the general election.
Big pickets outside government buildings, including a big Whitehall Office represents a significant and unmissable opportunity for leverage and publicity which comes around every 5 years and we need to put maximum effort into building the biggest possible turnout.
Our members have the ability to put real, industrial and public pressure on the likely incoming labour administration to minimally resolve the dispute in favour of our members but ultimately commit to insourcing the contract.
IL and Coalition for Change supporters are central to recruiting and organising G4S staff and pushing for this dispute to take place. We made a pledge as part of our joint programme to commit to supporting outsourced workers and we will continue to do just that.
On Tuesday 4th June, PCS held its first NEC since a majority of candidates from the Coalition for Change, including IL members were elected.
It was an extraordinary meeting, and not just because the NEC had not yet agreed its calendar for the year, but because of the way Left Unity, including the National President, conducted the meeting.
Or indeed didn’t conduct the meeting, because the meeting was a truncated one, suspended unilaterally by the President for over an hour, despite the pressing business this Union has before it.
The President suspended the meeting because it could not agree standing orders (the rules governing how the meetings are run).
NEC members elected as part of the Coalition of Change slate had proposed a series of amendments to the standing orders such as making the NEC more accessible and removing gagging order preventing NEC members speaking to members publicly about debates.
IL have believed for years that NEC members being prohibited from reporting on NEC meetings is undemocratic, prevents accountability and removes a key method of engaging the membership on important decisions.
We should be able talk to members about proceedings in a proportionate way, without undermining the communications strategy of the union; and to fulfil our elected mandate of democratising the NEC and the wider union so that a President who represents a minority of NEC members cannot ride roughshod over the majority. A copy of our proposed standing orders are below.
Two of the key standing orders (SOs) we wished to amend were the ones concerning how amendments to standing orders are made, and another dealing with amendments to or motions on the same topic of papers moved by Senior Full Time Officers (SFTOs: the General Secretary and Assistant General Secretary).
SOs 12.1-12.3 state that a two thirds majority is needed to adopt or amend the standing orders themselves. The Coalition moved an amendment that would mean only a simple majority was needed. This would be a democratic step that would attempt to avoid the farcical scenes we witnessed this week: where an NEC convened under standing orders that grant enormous and far-reaching discretion to a President who is himself a member of the NEC’s minority, and able to frustrate the majority with these powers.
SO 11.4 states that amendments or motions counterposed to those moved by a SFTO, ‘shall not directly negative the substantive recommendations’. Who decides if they do? It is, of course, the President. Our proposed amendment would have allowed NEC members, with the same democratic mandate as the General Secretary (just not the £100k+ salary) to have their alternative papers and motions heard in general debate, with the NEC deciding democratically which was preferable.
The current standing orders allow the General Secretary and President to shoot down NEC-proposed motions on any given topic or issue simply by proposing their own, and then ruling “substantive recommendations had been negated”. You couldn’t make it up!
Schrödinger’s Standing Orders
The NEC begins by agreeing its standing orders for the year. Because the new standing orders are not yet in place until agreed, the previous years are used to convene the first NEC meeting. The coalition began the debate by asking the President a question, if no standing orders were carried by a two thirds majority, would the previous years remain extant?
At first, the President, suggested they would. The coalition proposed our amendments, and while they were supported by a clear majority of 17 for and 14 against, they did not get a two thirds majority to be carried – the LU minority were obstructing what we believe is our democratic mandate for change.
When the Left Unity minority lost their motion to keep 2023’s standing orders (again 14-17) the President changed his mind. Apparently, the NEC cannot continue until there are new SOs agreed. Why the Damascene conversion? We believe, for factional reasons.
This is despite the fact that principal rule 8 and supplementary rules 7.1, 7.11, and 7.12 do not imply the need for standing orders – the NEC can conduct its business as it sees fit, within the rules. Sometimes the rules are silent – and that silence is the President’s discretion. But, their silence is for the NEC to determine. Rather than allow this, the President suspended the highest democratic body of the Union at a time when there were (and indeed are) vital issues that must be decided.
Successes for the coalition
After twiddling our thumbs for an hour, while refusing to leave the NEC Zoom to make sure we knew if the meeting was reconvened (we certainly weren’t told when it was going to happen) the Coalition reluctantly adopted the existing standing orders without being able to pass our vital amendments.
We collectively decided that it was more important to get to the substantive business of the membership. Th coalition reserve the right to attempt to democratise the Standing Orders in the future, and it’s likely that rule change motions to next year’s Annual Conference will be put.
Unfortunately, the President had other ideas, and immediately ruled that proposed changes to the NEC’s domestic arrangements, which would have made papers more accessible for disabled members, were not up for discussion.
We then moved to business which couldn’t allow Left Unity to invoke super-majorities and abuse of Presidential discretion to subvert the majority.
Firstly, the allocation of sub-committees. The Coalition, committed to a democratic, radical union and industrial strategy now have a majority on the NEC’s key committees. These include the Policy and Resources Committee which sets the Union’s strategic direction, the UK Civil Service Bargaining Committee which directs negotiations with the Cabinet Office, and the Organising committee which we want to use to develop an ambitious plan to grow and strengthen the membership after years of decline.
The National Disputes Committee, which decides on industrial action, is made up of the President, Deputy and Vice Presidents, the General Secretary and Assistant General Secretary, now also has a Coalition majority. This will be key in setting a program of action, selective or otherwise, which makes the most of our mandate while we assess and prepare to re-ballot other employers.
Next, the meeting then moved to General Election strategy. The General Secretary spent an unreasonably long time basically reciting their milquetoast paper on the topic. The PCS website has some initial details of the Union’s non-committal approach. If you’re expecting the information that it states is forthcoming to be much more scintillating… then you are likely to be disappointed.
There were another three motions from Coalition NEC members on alternative General Election strategy – which would have reaffirmed the right of branches to back candidates who had a track record of supporting our demands and values, with NEC approval, and in two cases stated the simple fact that it was likely Labour would win and that, while we are under no illusions that Starmer will enact socialism, his party in government would be preferable to another five years of the Tories.
The President ruled them out of order as is his prerogative under the undemocratic Standing Orders of the NEC.
An utterly bizarre decision. Annual Conference was not able to discuss the wider General Election strategy and now the NEC has also been prevented from doing so.
Nonetheless, an IL motion was heard and unanimously passed which will inject some reality into PCS’ political strategy at this critical time. After IL motion A12 was overwhelmingly carried at ADC, this motion called on the General Secretary to rapidly carry out its instructions and write to the Labour Party stating our industrial demands, asking for their commitment to them, and that they urgently meet with us, informing the membership of the responses we receive, or Labour’s silence.
The Coalition is clear – this is a NEC which will be active, radical, democratic, and not work in isolation – every motion will include instructions for the General Secretary to consult with and update groups, regions and branches – the true democratic locus of our union.
PCS Left Unit have labelled us the ‘Coalition of Chaos’. The NEC meeting demonstrated that we constitute a cohesive majority. We will have disagreements, this is healthy, but we have a passion for delivering our programme for the membership and we will continue to push for it regardless of the bureaucratic blockers placed in our path.
Centralism without democracy
But it won’t always be easy. We planned to use the first NEC meeting to demand detailed updates on the National Campaign, and on what was being done to assist the sacked HMRC reps at Benton Park View, neither of which were on the agenda. Indeed, the President only accepted that the victimised reps should be discussed as part of Any Other Business after Coalition for Change NEC members wrote to him en masse to request they were.
However, due to the President’s suspension of the NEC and his insistence that the meeting had a ‘hard finish’ we didn’t get to them. We are now hoping to hear about another extraordinary NEC this month to deal with this and other issues. If we don’t hear, then the majority will demand one, as is our right under the standing orders.
During the NEC elections, we joked that Left Unity were practising the old Stalinist gospel of democratic centralism without democracy. This has now been proven, with the National President presiding over the NEC not for the benefit of the Union, but the minority faction.
Have no fear. The Independent Left has remained committed to principles set out in our manifesto for over a decade – if you want to support our campaign to make this a democratic union that wins victories by empowering lay reps, you should join us.
Following the election of a Coalition for Change majority NEC, this years Annual Delegate Conference was going to be very important for members and activists who wanted to secure that victory by ensuring the policy of the union reflected the change in mood amongst the membership.
In that regard, it was a success.
Ensuring motions were heard
The Standing Orders Committee had ruled out several motions for technical or constitutional reasons. Despite many years of conference choosing to ignore please to over-turn standing orders decisions, an unprecedented number of delegates rose to challenge the, this year and great many of them were then overturned by conference, and the motions re-added to the running order.
Conference was not prepared to have motions submitted by members and branches over-ruled on minor bureaucratic points.
The National Campaign
The outgoing Left Unity NEC proposed a motion in a self-congratulatory fashion, hailed the success of last year’s action, and the £1500 non-consolidated payment as a victory. It didn’t acknowledge any shortcomings in last year’s dispute and made no mention of any re-ballots.
The motion, and the leadership, received heavy criticism from conference floor, largely relating to the decision to pause action last year in response to the £1500.
Two rival motions were moved in opposition to outgoing NEC’s. There were some differences between them, but both condemned the NEC for its conduct of the dispute and for the misleading wording of the consultative ballot which led to the pause.
In the end, Emergency motion A315 was passed, defeating the outgoing NEC’s motion. It calls on the leadership to coordinate with branches to ‘develop a plan for sustained, targeted action across those areas with a mandate’ and to ‘maintain the mood for action in these areas while re-balloting elsewhere commences’. It also called on the union to make 100,000 additional staff and a commitment to hybrid working part of the dispute.
A solid basis for the incoming Coalition for Change NEC to build upon.
Organising
The leadership also lost its organising motion, largely due to criticism of how they have conducted organising so far. The motion refused to accept any issues with the current organising strategy which has led us to the lowest proportion of members in the union in living memory and puts us in a position in many areas where we have very reduced leverage when we strike and where we could potentially be at threat of recognition.
The incoming majority leadership recognise this and have put forward a strategy for changing the unions organising strategy.
Political Strategy
There was also a debate on the political strategy. There were 2 motions in this debate A12 and A13 moved by the outgoing NEC.
A12 called on the NEC to put pressure on the Labour Party over specific and identified goals for and demands for them to commit to and enact in government to improve our organising and bargaining positions and to implement the elements of its programme relating to expanding workers’ rights and trade union freedoms. It called to demand that an incoming Labour government should immediately impose its policy commitments in these areas on the Cabinet Office and Civil Service leadership, to repeal Departmental bans on onsite strike meetings and other anti-union restrictions.
A13 in contrast did not commit the union to any political strategy in the election and take a completely uninterested view in the outcome or the policies of the parties or candidates vying for members votes.
Solidarity with the Palestinians
In the international section, motion A99 committed the union to continue its opposition to Israel’s attack on Gaza, for ‘a free and independent Palestinian state’, and against the victimisation of our members who have spoken out for Palestine.
The motion condemned Hamas’ killing of civilians on October 7th, but also condemned the mass killing, starvation and displacement of civilians by Israel in response. It welcomed PCS’ decision to donate substantial amounts of money to Medical Aid for Palestinians, and it also called on the union to provide guidance to members on their rights to attend protests and express views in support of the Palestinians.
This motion had widespread support. To the extent that there was debate, it was in nuances expressed by speakers supporting the motion. The SOC ordered the motion, stating other motions were covered by it. This included a motion claiming ‘antizionism isn’t antisemitism’, an absolute which is patently untrue and potentially discriminatory as there are examples of antizionism being antisemitism. Equally, motions expressing a desire for a 2-state settlement were tagged alongside those calling for the destruction of Israel. These positions are counter-posed and it would have been better to have an open debate on the question if some activists wished to change the unions position.
Again, we hope this predicates a much more active year for PCS’ international solidarity work, which, especially over Gaza was slow to materialise.
Equality and Trans Rights
Motion A52, noted the Tories’ anti-trans scapegoating, and the leaked Cabinet Office guidance which would have led to the harassment of trans and non-binary people. The motion instructed the NEC oppose any guidance which would marginalise trans and non-binary workers, and to organise action to confront this guidance if introduced. The motion passed overwhelmingly.
Conference once again rightfully asserting it’s belief in trans rights over a historically poor leadership position on the question.
A worker’s representative
In the Finance section, Assistant General Secretary and supporter of the Independent Left, John Moloney, gave a run down on the union’s finances, which are soon to be boosted by the re-introduction of the strike levy. He also mentioned his pledge to take only an inner London EO’s wage on the basis that union officials should not gain financially by given the privilege of being elected. As a result, he has given the rest of the ridiculously high AGS salary back to the union. This has meant he has now paid back well over £100,000 to the strike fund.
PCS Independent Left members and supporters hold organised interventions at Group and National conference.
We are the only group in the union to produce daily conference bulletins, responding to the debates and providing a perspective on upcoming motions. We also hold conference fringe meetings and were the only group to organise a conference social event.
The bulletins we produced this year are included below.
The PCS NEC election results have now been published.
The Coalition for Change, which brought together the PCS Independent Left (IL), Broad Left Network (BLN) and other groups and independents, has secured a clear NEC majority on a principled programme that addresses the key issues facing members and our trade union.
We thank the many branches that nominated Change candidates, the activists and members who voted and campaigned for them, and all the members who took part in PCS’ democracy.
Members have clearly voted for change in these NEC elections, confirming the mood for radical change within PCS that was evidenced during last year’s senior officer elections.
There is a great deal of work to be done by the incoming NEC, not least because:
Civil Service pay is in unprecedented long term decline.
Tens of thousands of members are stuck on and near the legal minimum wage.
The civil service is strong arming members into office working pattens that are unnecessary and discriminatory.
Non-civil service members all too often have poor terms and conditions, woeful employer regimes, and are under organised and under supported by national union.
Membership levels are too low, damaging our leverage.
The Coalition NEC members cannot overnight put right all that has been put right wrong, but they can and will start that work.
Our most immediate challenge is to respond to the results of the civil service wide ballots on pay and other issues, which will conclude on 13 May. It is unfortunate that we will have to undertake that task when the decisions of Left Unity NEC members and senior PCS officials have left our union in a weaker position today than we were in a year ago, but it is vital that PCS begins to rebuild the purchasing power of our wages.
Independent Left NEC members will:
Seek sharp debates on policy issues and collaborative working on delivering for members.
Place equality genuinely at the heart of everything PCS does.
Seek to end the spin culture that has too long dominated PCS and insist on timely, comprehensive, national negotiating reports to members.
Never forget that the lives of PCS members are affected by events outside of our workplaces and that social and international solidarity must be a PCS lode star.
IL supporters have long played a critical role in PCS. We pioneered equality impact assessments of employer policies; established that the Crown is the legal employer of all civil servants; pioneered cross departmental equal pay claims; led fightbacks against office closures; argued alone for many years that a Fighting Fund War Chest and paid selective action must be vital parts of PCS’ armoury; sought the contractualisation of terms and conditions so that they cannot be arbitrarily changed by our employer, and have long fought for a membership led union. Please join us.
Today elections for the Group Executive Committee in DWP have opened. Independent Left is supporting a vote for change across the group to deliver for DWP members.
You can find our leaflet below in image and pdf form. If you’d like any delivered to you to give out in your branch or workplace, please contact the campaign:
PCS Independent Left 