At yesterday’s NEC meeting, members of the Independent Left voted to ‘pause’ the levy for the Civil Service national campaign dispute. Since last summer we have consistently argued to review and reduce the levy ahead of a permanent solution to make sure the Fighting Fund remained healthy and able to support action by members.

Instead, Fran Heathcote and Martin Cavanagh have repeatedly and deliberately failed to allow the NEC majority position (to review and reduce the levy) to be enacted, for the cynical political gain of their faction, Left Unity.

What is the levy?

The previous, LU controlled, NEC introduced the current levy in May 2024, as they prepared for an industrial action ballot over civil service pay. It was set at £5 a month for members earning £26,001 or more and £3 a month for members earning £26,000 or less.

At the time, the NEC explained that the ‘small’ levy, ‘is in effect a solidarity levy that creates a fund for those who would not otherwise be able to afford to strike’.

LU take a kicking

That ballot did not fare well. Members were understandably disillusioned after LU threw away the previous year’s dispute for the lowest pay increase in the public sector, and a taxable, non-consolidated (one-off) £1,500 bung, on which Mark Serwotka didn’t even have the sense to request an equality impact assessment before agreeing to the employer.

They did not do the organisational work in the intervening period, instead focusing the union’s communications on defending their actions, and beginning a PR campaign for Fran Heathcote and Paul O’Connor’s General and Assistant General Secretary run. As a result, while 62 employers, representing 19,160 members, crossed the 50% threshold in the recent ballot, another remaining 109 areas did not cross the threshold, representing 127,800 members.

As a result, members voted for a (slim) majority of Coalition for Change candidates at the NEC elections, and a restive ADC 2024 threw out LU’s tired industrial strategy and adopted motion A315. A315 further instructed the NEC to immediately plan for targeted action in areas, as well as preparing for re-ballots.

Action denied

IL and other C4C members on the incoming NEC were excited to help implement this strategy, but we have been blocked at every turn. Leverage submissions sent in by many branches with mandates, keen to exert pressure to win our demands, were submitted at the beginning of June 2024. They were sat on, finally shown to the Nations Disputes Committee by Heathcote weeks later. By this point (August) the General Election, which lay reps knew was the perfect time to exert political pressure on Labour, had been and gone. There was little leverage to be had now that a government with a gigantic majority were calling the shots. Action, desired by reps and the C4C majority of the NEC, was denied by Heathcote and her LU clique. At the same NE meeting, the General Secretary said she believed that we should ‘welcome the significant concessions’ the government had provided (an unfunded ~5% award that was worse than most of the public sector, again) and therefore end the national dispute, and the levy. The C4C disagreed, we wanted to build, prepare for a new ballot, and win more – and we believed we needed the levy to keep the Fighting Fund prepared for this campaign.

The C4C wanted to review and reduce the levy. At the 5th July NEC we agreed the General Secretary’s recommendation ‘that the NEC considers whether or not the levy should continue and agrees a way forward’. As of yet, we have not been given the opportunity to have that conversation, or been allowed to move or vote on our alternative strategy. LU have made it clear that our options were either that we pause (end) the levy for their political gain, or continue it for their political gain. If the levy continued, they would spin it as members’ money being needlessly stockpiled with no action to justify it, and if the levy ended they would spin it as an LU victory over the coalition.

IL’s alternative

We have tried again and again to plot a rational course on the levy.

In August, as the General Secretary recommended that we accept the 5% remit and abandon the campaign, we attempted to move an alternative strategy which included the levy’s immediate reduction, followed by further consultation with members about its future. Cavanagh ruled this motion out, due to his (erroneous) belief that NEC members having alternative or amended recommendations to the General Secretary contravenes the NEC’s standing orders – essentially resulting in frequent ‘our way or nothing’ ultimatums from Fran to the NEC. In November, again, our attempt to reduce and review the levy was blocked by Cavanagh when we tried to propose it.

We want to have a sustainable fighting fund, a war chest for the dispute over the 2025 pay remit we know is coming. But we know £3 or £5 a month is a lot for some people, and that it has become an issue (in no small part because LU have talked about nothing else for six months). We’ve been trying to get this on the right track since we took our seats on the NEC. But faced with a General Secretary, a President, and a cadre of senior LU FTOs bent on wrecking, we have now decided that enough is enough. Members should not have to cough up more because a group of belligerent bureaucrats are determined to take their ball home with them if they don’t get to set the rules, nor should they be left in limbo as LU weaponise this in the absence of having anything practical to say about what the PCS should be doing to win for members under this new, underwhelming government.

Building a fighting fund to win

How will we pay for disputes now the levy’s ended?

There is nearly £3 million in the levy fund currently, which would be enough to cover a limited civil service dispute, should this arise.

As we have related though, the general Fighting Fund is in deficit after funding our courageous Facilities Management comrades in their various disputes. We’ve heard varying reports about what’s going on with these funds – FTOs have said that the levy is ‘lending’ money to other disputes at various meetings, although we hasten to add that this was categorically denied by the General Secretary and others at an NEC meeting. Comrades in HMRC were apparently told they might have to find funds themselves for a strike around the sacked reps at Benton Park View, although that seems to have been a misunderstanding.

However, the Fighting Fund more generally does have reserves which can be used to support our ongoing disputes, and there is a healthy surplus of cash in the general fund. Given that the first object of the PCS rulebook is to ‘protect and promote the interests of its members’, we hope that Heathcote would not think twice about supplementing the Fighting Fund with general funds should these disputes need more cash – something all sides should support.

Going forward

At the December NEC, again we tried to resolve this situation but again we were blocked by Cavanagh, of course.

We proposed that the General Secretary bring to the next NEC modelling on options for a reduced levy, including an option for collecting the levy as a percentage of members’ subs rates. The outcomes from the NEC discussion should form the basis of motions to go to Conference ’25.
And bring to the next NEC (15 January 2025) a draft consultation with Groups and branches on redesigning how we collect money for the national campaign and wider fighting fund, to ensure that we are prepared for future disputes of any nature without relying on temporary levies.
At the same time, Heathcote proposed a pause and said there was no time prior to ADC for either a consultation or to prepare a new model of building the fighting fund. Perhaps, given the significant salary bump she got on election, she has some holidays planned?

The IL think hers is a ridiculous position to take, and we will address it. We think that there is no better consultative mechanism than members attending their AGMs, attending their mandating meetings, and sending their delegates to ADC with an instruction to back a new approach.
With that in mind, we will prepare motions for ADC 2025 which seeks to revise supplementary rule 3.14(d) of the union (which mandates that an additional 50p per member per month be collected for the Fighting Fund) so that a percentage of a member’s subscription rate is collected instead, if they are in a recognised workplace.

We will suggest to ADC that this rate be set at 10% of a recognised member’s subscription. This would vastly reduce the amount members pay compared to the levy – even the ~6% of members on a band A subscription rate, for the highest earners, would pay £2.10 per month – our lowest paid members would actually pay less than they currently do to the Fighting Fund, 49 pence. All told, this change would raise approximately £2.7m per annum for the Fighting Fund. This would sustainably, and progressively, build a reserve to fund action, and as a consequence reduce the need for any temporary levies in future.

If you want this – then support our motion in your branches and on the conference floor.

The decision facing members in the 2025 NEC elections

No doubt, you will have heard Left Unity’s clarion call to “pause the levy!”, and their criticisms of the IL and the rest of the Coalition for Change for not supporting Heathcote, thus bringing ‘chaos’.

But what vision of the union do Left Unity offer as an alternative? A capitulation. Without a sustainable Fighting Fund there is no flexibility to support action where we have leverage. While the old levy did need replacing, they offer no positive vision of how they would support action going forward. Left Unity cares more about being in charge than they do about representing PCS members and making our union an effective vehicle for change. Read their election statements – with the levy gone, they say almost nothing. They offer even less.

To meet the challenges of the second half of this decade, PCS needs to change its way. It needs to be a more agile, open, and democratic union. It needs to empower lay reps at branch level to pursue creative disputes that speak to their membership, with the cash to back them up. It needs to organise digital and data workers, security guards and cleaners who can be the backbone of this union.

The Independent Left, alongside our comrades in the Coalition for Change, have plans to make these changes. They have been frustrated again and again this year by a General Secretary and President who act, first and foremost, in the interests of their faction, rather than the membership.

To begin to undo this, members must elect a president, and a sizeable majority of ordinary members to the NEC in 2025 from the Coalition for Change, so that the committee can function as it was intended to and force the General Secretary to actually act on the decisions of the majority of the union’s governing body and the mandate they were elected on, as opposed to doing what best suits the preservation of Left Unity.

If you want a fighting, democratic union, please consider nominating and voting for us. If you want to be more involved in developing our policies, consider joining IL.

Vote for democracy, vote for the Independent Left

The Independent Left want to change this union and how it is run, not just the personnel of the NEC. This has been reflected in our slogan “For a fighting, rank-and-file controlled union” as long as the IL have existed. If the PCS is to survive and thrive it must be genuinely democratic, drawing on members and reps’ knowledge to build campaigns which meet contemporary challenges.

Despite the Coalition for Change winning a narrow majority last year, Left Unity have abused the offices of General Secretary and President to prevent the NEC from reviewing the levy or prosecuting the national campaign. LU have forced inertia for the sake of their faction’s political gain. 

The General Secretary has unilaterally spent close to one million pounds on staffing changes designed to bureaucratically insulate her, and a further £640,000 on redundancies for those who don’t align with her narrow political vision, refusing to even consult the NEC about it. LU acts now only as a way for its leadership to escape the privations of the modern civil service; either via facility time, travel and subsistence; or well-paid jobs in the bureaucracy. 

They offer members nothing. Their moribund grip on PCS must be broken. 

Members can do this by nominating and voting for IL and our slate of Coalition for Change socialists, standing on a transformational platform.

Preparing for the challenges

It’s vital that we prepare for the challenges that face us by winning the battle for democracy, and re-launching the national campaign on pay, jobs and pensions, and building our strike fund. We must begin to fight for the flexible working rights that all members deserve. In the 2025 elections our aim is to win an overwhelming NEC majority with our Coalition partners, and enact a radical program of change.

The Independent Left will fight for:

• Pay restoration – civil servants have lost 15-38% since 2010
• No more civil servants on minimum wage!
• A return to national pay bargaining, by any industrial or legal means available
• An end to the ‘two-tier’ workforce, where newer staff have worse terms and conditions
• Flexible working – our work, our way! Campaigning for a four-day week with no loss of pay
• Pension justice – stopping and reimbursing overpayments, no raising the retirement age
• Equality – fight discrimination industrially and legally. Empower and defend our trans and non-binary siblings in the face of attacks
• Mass-unionisation of outsourced workers. End their poverty pay and conditions and bring them back in-house so they can work with dignity and security
• Work with the overlooked ~5% of civil servants on the Digital and Data Framework to secure a better deal for them
• Responsive legal services which work for, not against, reps and members
• Climate justice with a worker-led just transition- no jobs on a dead planet!
• A responsible and socially useful utilisation of artificial intelligence (AI), for the benefit, not detriment, of civil servants and citizens

A campaign to win

To do this, we must have a campaign which meets these challenges and inspires the confidence of members. Since 2006, the IL has said that pay can’t be separate – our campaign will link pay, the right to flexible working, office closures, the erosion of sick pay and other rights, and the injustices faced by those in privatised functions. Each can create disputes and exert leverage on the employer for the other.

Disaggregated ballots, which the IL long argued for, show we can get mandates when campaigns are not rushed for the purposes of LU’s election drives. We must be creative and use national and selective strikes, as well as action short of strikes, and take advantage of the government’s travails to exert maximum industrial leverage.

A democratic, agile and forward-looking PCS

In order to run a transformational campaign, PCS must become more democratic.

The IL will fight for:

• Enabling representatives to use national union membership data and resources to communicate directly with members. No more bureaucratic gatekeeping.
• Transparency regarding negotiations with the employer and the proceedings of the NEC.
• Presidential term limits to prevent senior lay reps becoming part of the bureaucracy.
• A permanent arrangement, approved by conference, for sustainably building the Fighting Fund, avoiding temporary levies.
• Elections of full time officers with bargaining responsibility for our members, on wages which reflect those of members.
• Empowering regional committees, devolved nations, and sidelined groups (PSg, Met Police, Culture) with more decision making-powers and funds. 
• Electoral reform and considering the use of Single Transferable Vote (STV) in elections instead of multi-member First-Past-the-Post (MMFPTP) for fairer, more proportional representation.

If you want to support a democratic, radical and agile PCS, read more about our joint platform and vote for the Independent Left and Coalition for Change!

And if you want to help shape our work to change PCS, consider joining the IL for just £2 per month.

Civil service security workers outsourced to G4S have been on strike for improved pay, sick pay and annual leave, and against a two-tier workforce. This picket line interview with Carly Wade, a PCS rep at the Cabinet Office in Whitehall, is republished with permission.

We have a two-tier pay system here. We have a lot of people who are just on the London Living Wage, and some of us get more. We want one pay tier. We don’t want anyone to be without sick pay, we don’t want anyone to have a lot less holiday. We all do the same job – we want everyone to be equal.

We’re asking for a certain amount above the London Living Wage for those on that; for a percentage in line with inflation for the rest of us; twenty five days sick pay for everybody; and thirty days holiday for everybody. We need the two-tier system to stop.

Our colleagues who have no sick pay at the moment, for instance, obviously have to come to work unwell. And then if a member of someone’s family has Covid or flu, say, it’s a knock on effect for all of us.

I do get sick pay, and my salary is better, but a lot of my colleagues don’t get those things. The reason is I was previously employed by the civil service, and I have civil service terms and conditions. Our workforce has been outsourced six times since 2007, and each time the company has brought in a certain number of people. So the number who were directly employed constantly falls. I don’t think there’s even half of us now who are on those relatively decent terms and conditions.

Even those of us on civil service conditions haven’t had a pay rise in seven years.

I want to underline that outsourcing is the problem. The relative benefits the civil service brings, in terms of pensions, for instance, a certain amount of sick pay, a certain amount of holiday pay – these companies don’t bring that. They bring people in, sometimes on zero hours contracts; so you’ll see someone for seven hours one week and then fifty hours the next week.

We’re against outsourcing. We believe that government buildings, especially, shouldn’t be outsourced. The quality of the job done also goes down. You can see that with the people they’ve brought in to replace us, who have had no real government security training. Meanwhile, even at normal times, when people have no job security, when they’re scared to go sick, when they feel they have to do overtime, or won’t get annual leave approved, that has a huge impact on people’s state of mind too.

When are you on strike till?

We began on the 28^th, and we’re on strike till this Sunday [10 November]. Monday we all go back to work. We’re picketing Monday to Thursday both weeks, 8-10am.

There’s no movement officially, but we know, and our friends in the building have confirmed it, that this is not sustainable. They’ve brought people over from Northern Ireland, they’ve had to pay for their accommodation, for their food, for taxis. Management have had to come in at 6 every morning, which never happens! I do believe we are going to win. Once we stop on Monday, we’ll announce our next round of dates. We won’t stop till we get what we deserve.

You said this is the first time you’ve been on strike. How does it feel?

Yes, this is the first time [security at] 70 Whitehall [the Cabinet Office building] has been on strike. Do you know what – it feels quite empowering. It really does. There’s a lot of bullying going on with, in this company especially. People are not treated well; they’re treated like second class citizens in a way. They didn’t think we would pull this off. I’m a very new rep, my colleague [fellow rep Mohammed Miezou] is a very new rep, and this is the first time we’ve done anything like this – but everybody has come out on strike, every single member has come out. Everybody is so pumped up for this; everyone is here at 7 o’clock in the morning, everyone has got their whistles and is ready to go.

I’ve never seen unity like this strike has brought us. Everybody is so loyal to one another. It’s actually been quite emotional to see everyone come together.

What would you say to other workers who are thinking about going on strike, or even just joining a union?

Know your worth. Know what you deserve. I’d recommend everyone join a union. I’ve been here 19 years, and in the union 17 or 18 of those. PCS have been fantastic; they’ve given us the support we’ve needed, materials we’ve needed, they’ve been on the phone at 11 o’clock at night…. We’ve also had good support from our directly employed PCS colleagues, who’ve joined our picket lines, come and clapped us, brought us chocolates, and found other ways to support us.

Wherever you work, everybody needs to stand up for what they believe in. If you think you’re not getting what you’re worth, then come out! They can’t run businesses without their workers.

What would you expect from the new government?

Well, unlike our civil service colleagues, our ministers haven’t come and supported us. They’ve not even come out to speak to us and find out what our issues are and why we’re on strike. We find it extremely disappointing.

What we want to see from this government is insourcing. We’d like to see contracts like this insourced. Companies like G4S and similar, they don’t have anyone’s best interests: it’s all about profit. You’d get so much more loyalty and commitment out of your workforce if you brought them back in house and treated everybody with respect.

What kind of solidarity do you want?

It’s lovely to hear buses and lorries coming past and beeping. That and people joining our picket lines and clapping gives us such a boost. It’s tiring blowing whistles for three hours, so it gives us a real boost to get support from others. People can also promote our stuff on social media, and contact their MP. And promote the message: we need insourcing of all government contracts. 

You can read more of Sacha Ismail’s coverage of PCS here: Union officials should be on workers’ wages

The agenda for this meeting was incredibly packed due to the NEC repeatedly not getting through business and having items rolled into the next meeting. Despite this, the NEC only ran for a half day from 1:30-5:30pm. This resulted in us only getting through two substantive agenda items – the National Campaign report and the National Disputes report. The rest of the meeting was taken up by Rule 10 complaints.

The meeting opened as every NEC meeting opens; with the Record of Decisions from the last meeting being voted on. Coalition for Change comrades attempted to move amendments to the RoDs regarding motions from branches about the Special Delegate Conference. Unfortunately, these amendments were ruled out of order by the President. This presidential ruling was challenged by CfC comrades but to overrule it would require a 2/3^rds majority which wasn’t met.

National Campaign

Next, we moved onto the national campaign paper and in a truly shocking turn of events, the President announced that a motion submitted by the Coalition for Change was going to be allowed to be heard as part of this agenda item! Before the motion could be debated though, we listened to the General secretary’s leadoff on her paper. This took quite a while considering there were no recommendations in the paper, which was mostly just an update on the various unfruitful meetings that have happened since early December. What does seem to come through loud and clear from it, is the complete and utter lack of genuine engagement we are getting from the Cabinet Office. The paper expressly states they ‘have no plans to move towards sectoral collective bargaining for the civil service’ and ‘did not believe any agreement was possible’. On the question of facilities time, the Cabinet Office is apparently ‘open to reviewing its guidance’ but we wouldn’t hold our breath for a positive outcome from this review given previous experience. All in all, the change in government has certainly not resulted in any kind of step change when it comes to their own workforce. In fact, on pay the government have outlined recommendations for a 2.8% rise this year, very close to the current and projected rate of inflation this year and much lower than the unions demand to make-up for the dramatic real-terms pay cuts we’ve experienced since 2010. All that talk from Labour of ‘a new deal for working people’ just seems like a distant memory now.

After the GS led off on her paper, she indicated that she was in support of the motion submitted by CfC comrades. This motion seeks to put us on a war footing and lays out a set of actions which aim to get us ready to win a resounding yes vote in any future ballot. While we find it hard to trust any Left Unity support – and Independent Left comrades openly suspect political manoeuvring was at play – the unanimous vote in favour of this motion is still a positive step forward for the national campaign.

Not least of all because amongst other things the motion calls for;

• NECLOs to urgently seek the convening of EC meetings for their areas, to report on discussions with the Cabinet Office and to make clear the NEC view that significant progress is unlikely without a serious fight.
• All NECLOs to seek input from their areas on what the demands should be, the current mood of members, and what steps lead reps believe should be taken, either at national or delegated level, to build the mood for a serious dispute.
• Particular attention to be paid to any views on what resources the lead reps across the union believe they need to deliver an overwhelming “Yes” vote in a ballot, and likewise views on how to build for and support the inclusion of devolved and commercial sector areas (as per A315 passed at ADC).
• A comms strategy and calendar to be devised and agreed by the Senior Officers Committee reflecting the union’s demands, which will include supporting Groups to speak to their members via well-advertised online meetings.
• Organising materials to be prepared and circulated to branches ASAP.
• The General Secretary to work across the TUC, Public Sector Liaison Group and other affiliated forums to build the appetite for action across the movement.
• An extraordinary NEC to be convened in February to discuss feedback and the latest position in negotiations, and to gauge the mood among members and judge the requirement for a statutory/indicative ballot and how and when it should be conducted.

During the debate members of LU seemed to insinuate that the reason they were supporting the CfC motion is because it lays out much of what the GS had already tried to implement previously and we could have been doing months ago. This is likely a foreshadowing of attack lines which will be used in the upcoming NEC elections so in order to dispel any myths that might start circulating, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the previous recommendations put forward by the GS in key NEC papers

• May 2024: The NEC to take stock of new conference policy, our political leverage and the outcome of the General Election before determining a way forward for the National Campaign
• July 2024: More consideration, further forums and meetings with the new government
• August 2024: Welcome the concessions won so far, pause any plans for industrial action at this stage, pause the levy, engage in further talks at delegated level to try to secure more money than the 4.5% pay offer on the table.

Absolutely none of this outlines any kind of serious industrial strategy.  

What was also worth noting during this debate is after the failure of the previous, LU, NEC’s ballot in May 2024, data was collected which could be used to analyse strengths and weakness at branch level, to assist in building for the next campaign. The General Secretary informed the NEC in July that ‘those conversations will now begin’. But they don’t seem to have done? We ask reps and members, have FTOs spoken to you about your results and what you could do next time? Whether this inaction is a result of Heathcote’s PCS being more occupied by shifting staff around for political purposes, or something deeper, is unclear.

The Coalition for Change motion agreed by the NEC on Wednesday makes clear that engagement with reps about what could have been better last year, and what they need to win this time, is essential. But in a further sign that the General Secretary is more concerned in consolidating her own power than running an effective union, instructions from the NEC which would have led to the creation of data and material that could have been used for organising and agitational purposes have gone ignored.

At the September NEC, the Coalition passed three motions written by the IL. One instructed the General Secretary to systematically capture having comprehensive pay and HR data from across the civil service. Much of this is publicly available, further could be obtained by bargaining information requests, FOI, parliamentary questions, or other means. This data would make clear the degree of unequal and discriminatory pay in the Civil Service. The General Secretary was further instructed to plan for how this data would be made accessible for reps and FTOs. It would aid pay negotiators in local bargaining, and the union to evidence indirect discrimination, with the ability to run campaigns on both.

Two further motions sought to better organise Government Digital and Data (formerly DDaT) workers, a diverse and growing component of the Civil Service (currently ~5% of all staff). The General Secretary was instructed to try and revive the union’s moribund Professional and Managers’ Association (PMA) by inviting Digital and Data workers to use it as a viable forum where they can discuss common professional and occupational concerns. If successful, this could become a self-organising group within the union, always a good thing!

Digital and Data professionals have a separate pay settlement from their colleagues across the departments they work in. But, not being a natural constituency of LU’s workerism, they have been paid little attention to. So, in another motion, the General Secretary was instructed to take the necessary soundings with relevant activists and members, and then draft a Digital and Data pay claim and a claim regarding changes to the framework under which their roles operate.

Such work takes time, we appreciate. But it also takes work. Unfortunately, when an IL NEC member asked the General Secretary for a progress update on Wednesday, they were informed nothing had been done. This was because, according to the GS such matters were the job of the Assistant General Secretary. AGS John Moloney intervened to say that the work had never been remitted to him, nor had he been asked to do it. The NEC had asked the General Secretary to do it. John was perhaps too polite to mention that Heathcote had abolished his office and staff, in an attempt to isolate and disempower him in favour of consolidating resources around herself and the unelected (and election losing) Paul O’Connor.

National disputes

The GS next delivered her paper on National Disputes. In short, there are lots of disputes happening across PCS. Many of them are disputes being led by outsourced FM workers who represent some of our worst paid members. These members are more often than not doing extremely difficult jobs in terrible conditions. Over the past year new focus has been given, under the Assistant General Secretary, to these really important disputes which are recruiting many new members.

Branches and Committees are encouraged to send messages of solidarity as well as advertise these disputes and where possible organise members to attend picket lines. A full list of all current disputes can be found in the paper linked above.

Rule 10s

Finally the last couple of hours of the meeting were spent on rule 10 complaints.

Rule 10.1 of the PCS rulebook states:

“Where, on receipt of a complaint from a PCS Branch or any individual member, the NEC considers there are grounds for considering whether a member has seriously prejudiced the Union’s interests, and is not a fit or proper person to remain a member and/or hold Union office, it may start action under this Rule.”

These complaints are of course highly confidential and no NEC member would ever write about individual cases in a report like this. However, it is probably worth understanding exactly what rule 10 states in order to understand the very serious nature of them. In the most serious cases Rule 10s can result in someone being stripped of their membership of the union so we’re sure readers will understand why it’s vital for due consideration, debate and oversight to be given to these matters.

The President of PCS, Martin Cavanagh, working with the General Secretary, Fran Heathcote, and with the support of the LU NEC minority, has blocked everything the NEC majority has positively sought to do, hiding behind the most spurious and shameless interpretations of the NEC standing orders we sought to amend. Without the agreement of 2/3^rds of NEC members, Presidential rulings cannot be overturned, and the President has interpreted his own remit as the chair of NEC meetings to to allow himself to rule on literally anything, even where the very wording of the standing orders contradict his interpretations. This sounds both egregiously undemocratic and mind-bogglingly convoluted because it is, and we expect nothing different at the NEC meeting tomorrow, 15th Jan.

It would be more accurate to call Cavanagh and Heathcote the Left Unity President and Left Unity General Secretary as they have dropped all pretence of following the rules or working for the members; instead they are out-and-out working only for an LU victory at the next NEC elections.

Together they have prevented the NEC taking decisions on crucial issues, including on pay, jobs and other terms and conditions. They blocked us from implementing our long-advocated position of reviewing of the levy and so stopped it being reduced to a long-term sustainable level that balances the need to build and maintain a formidable fighting fund, with the burden of the current levy on members’ subs.

Attempts by the NEC and branches to break the logjam by calling for a Special Delegate Conference have been met with the same contemptuous obstruction. The end result of Cavanagh, Heathcote and LU’s sum efforts is they preside over continuing low pay and falling wages, job losses, and enforced office-working. They are the blockage that has to be cleared!

Thankfully that can be done at the next NEC elections, soon to be on us. We need to decisively defeat LU.