The unions leadership is at pains to tell us that “Nobody will be left behind” from the current settlement, but not everyone is getting the £1500 payment.

This article focusses on the sex discrimination inherent in the pro-ratering of the £1500 payment. We will write shortly about the other members being left behind, including those in the culture sector, where employers are simply refusing to pay the money and the Left Unity leadership are asking our members in those institutions to fight on alone.

The current position

The largest government department, DWP have just announced that they will prorate the £1500 for part-time workers. We assume that most other departments, if they haven’t already, will follow suit.

Given that the great bulk of part-timers are women, this means in reality that we are seeing prorating by gender. There’s other gender equality issues that haven’t been addressed either, for example, it’s not clear that women on unpaid maternity leave during the qualifying period will be paid.

How did this come to pass?

Well, we can blame the Left Unity leadership and the General Secretary.

If this sounds harsh, let’s examine the facts as we know them. Unlike the NHS, teachers, rail, etc. there have been no pay talks, as far as we are aware, between the union and the UK Civil Service in regard to 4.5% plus 0.5%; Ministers just announced it.

Similarly, with the £1500 there was no direct negotiations either, where our team meets theirs. What seems to have happened is there were back channel discussions between the General Secretary and the Civil Service, and out of these the £1500 emerged.

One of the reasons the union fields teams for pay and other talks, is that a group of people bring different ideas and experiences to such talks.

If the £1500 had been proposed to a team, then someone might have said; the cost of living impacts part time and full time staff the same (you don’t get a discount on energy bills for being a part timer) and the £1500 supposedly is “in recognition of the pressures” faced by all staff, so therefore we must insist on it being paid in full for all staff.

Instead, as only Mark Serwotka was involved in the talks, then the above mustn’t have occurred to him (we are taking the most charitable view here – the alternative is that he did know but didn’t push for it), just as it didn’t occur to him that as the £1500 is not new money so staff related budgets might have to be squeezed to get the dough – staff will end up paying for it, one way or the other.

Publicly against pro-rateing; privately accepting it

On the 6th of June, a Management Action Brief (MAB) was issued by the union for bargainers, stating that once employers had committed to pay the £1500, ‘pro-ratered where applicable’, bargaining units should go into negotiations on the consolidated pay remit.

Firstly, where is pro-ratering applicable? The public statements from the union and the General Secretary, including at members meetings, is that it shouldn’t be in any circumstances.

Secondly, either the dispute is still continuing and no delegated bargaining is allowed, as per the NEC’s own Motion A292 at national conference, or the leadership has already begun to end the dispute unilaterally, prior to members voting.

No equality impact assessment

In the creation of any policy or pay settlement, employers are bound to ensure that they don’t disproportionately impact any protected characteristic. The leadership should have asked for equality evidence. They have not asked for it and they have not issued any advice to bargaining units regarding equality impacts. An abrogation to the unions commitment to equality.

The dispute must continue

DWP’s announcement, along with other employers, is a further reason why the dispute must go on, particularly when you consider that the payment of the monies announced are not conditional on us ending the dispute. So if you are going to get the money in any case, why not stick out for more!          

Yesterday, branch delegates to the London and South East Regional AGM voted unanimously for a motion calling on the NEC to continue the dispute.

The motion, proposed by Independent Left members in the DLUHC National branch called on the NEC to immediately renew ballot mandates, renew national and targeted strike action and draw up a programme of future action.

Following a short debate, all branches present in the room and online voted in support of the motion, including a Left Unity member of the NEC who also spoke in support.

Both during the motions debate and the previous Q&A session with the General Secretary, Mark Serwotka, branch delegates lined-up to express their members views, garnered through pay meetings, that the dispute should continue.

The L&SE region is by far the largest region in the union, representing over 50,000 members – over 25% of the total PCS membership.

The AGM also passed policy asserting the need for the region to engage in building trade union anti-fascist activity and prioritising the recruitment and organisation of outsourced workers.

Full text of the motion passed below:

That this Annual General Meeting notes that:

1. The package of measures announced by
   the Government on 2nd June was not an
   offer to PCS and was not conditional on
   PCS calling a halt to its campaign to
   secure, most importantly, a 10%
   consolidated cost of living increase in pay
   backdated to 2022/23 and an underpin of
   £15 per hour.
2. The 2023/24 Pay remit headline figure
   was sharply criticised by the PCS
   leadership and by Early Day Motion 1097
   for being below the rate of inflation. It is
   also not clear that HMT will provide
   additional funding for the remit but if it
   does not it will result in greater job loss
   and heavier workloads.
3. The discretion to enable departments to
   make a fixed non-consolidated payment
   of £1,500 per full-time employee, subject
   to eligibility, while a welcome
   achievement of our campaign, has many
   weaknesses. For example:

• It does not add a penny to our salaries
  and therefore the 2023 pay awards
  will t be based on the poor pay rates
  established in 2022.
• It will not count towards pension,
  redundancy, or overtime calculations.
• It will leave low paid civil servants
  stranded on desperately low pay.
• Departments are free to pay civil
  servants working part time on a pro
  rata basis and to impose conditions
  on payment.
• The lump sum will only be paid to
  members in the civil service on 31
  March 2023 and who remain in the
  CS on the date of payment.
• It does not require Departments to
  offer an option for members to take
  the lump sum in a manner that will
  reduce the amount of Universal Credit
  they will lose.
• Central government is not providing
  additional funding for the lump sum.

There is little meaningful progress on job
security and nothing at all on the
reduction of our pension contributions
and repayment for the overcharging to
date.
We therefore call on the NEC to:

1. Explain the issues and problems outlined
   at 1-4 above with issues to members.
2. To regain and renew legal mandates for
   strike action.
3. Renew the campaign of national and
   targeted action involving all bargaining
   groups with a current live legal mandate
   for strike action.
4. Draw up and implement a programme for
   future national and targeted strike action,
   showing tactical flexibility and not ruling
   out any particular form of industrial
   action.

In the run-up to to the union’s all-members Facebook Live session on the national dispute, we’d like to give members some food for thought whilst tuned in.

PCS General Secretary, Mark Serwotka, recently stated, “as a consequence of a historic amount of industrial action, for the first time in our Union’s history we have forced the government to make major concessions on the question of pay.” But the truth is that the Government has only made minor pay concessions.

At the heart of PCS’ pay dispute for 2022 is the demand for a 10% cost of living increase in salaries and for a national living wage of £15.00 per hour. All that the Tories have done, by way of additional money, is to allow management teams in the civil service delegated pay areas discretion to pay an unconsolidated £1,500 per full time employee in 2023. This does not come anywhere near to meeting our 2022 pay claim.

Ironically, however, the General Secretary revealed one truth about his and Left Unity’s more than twenty years of dominance of PCS: they have delivered precious little to members by way of increased pay.

Seizing on the £1,500 as a way out of the pay dispute, the leadership:

• Failed to realise that the Government would claw back a chunk of the payment by reducing the benefit paid to members in receipt of Universal Credit.
• Failed to explore how such detrimental consequences could be minimised. (While any increase in income might be deducted from members receiving UC there is a significant difference between losing benefit for a one-off payment and losing benefit for a permanent rise in salary).
• Failed to insist that, the overwhelmingly female, civil servants who work part time should receive the full £1,500, instead of it being reduced pro rata, in recognition of the fact that inflation has hit them just hard as anybody.
• Failed to challenge the restriction of the lump sum to those in civil service employment on 31 March 2023 and at the time of payment, which will exclude those members who suffered detriment in 2022 but have since left the civil service, possibly after striking, and those members who joined after 31 March 2023 and may also have taken strike action.

These failings are the product of a leadership over eager to get out of the dispute and uninterested in the views and expertise of members. The leadership want the dispute over so that they can concentrate on the truly important thing which is the GS and AGS elections later this year. We can throw a spanner in their works by working for a vote to continue the dispute in the members’ ballot, that is sure to come soon. So, IL welcomes the news that some branches are grouping together to run such a campaign. Members need more money, so let’s continue the dispute. If you agree, why not to join the Independent Left by clicking here.