It was a short NEC meeting on Wednesday afternoon where we discussed which motions the NEC will put forward to the upcoming Annual Delegate Conference – where members from across PCS will come together to debate motions as the union’s highest democratic decision-making body.

The meeting approved a new Organising Strategy, which represents a whole new approach compared to the failed strategy which members roundly rejected at last year’s ADC. With a clear plan to build on this, Independent Left members proposed a new platform for negotiators and organisers to be able to easily compare the pay ranges across all the employers represented by our union. This will not only embolden our Civil Service members but will have a clear focus on our outsourced and agency members, supporting the Independent Left-led campaign on insourcing, and particularly, support our DDaT colleagues. 

As part of the Coalition for Change, IL also supported putting the National Shop Steward Network (NSSN) affiliation to ADC. While we have criticisms of the NSSN, we believe it is right that members can debate and decide. 

A potential real victory for PCS awaits at ADC if members agree with our plan to democratise and open up the NEC, and eliminating the ability to cynically use the Standing Orders to cause deadlock.

But the real highlight of the meeting was an incredible U-turn by Left Unity members on the NEC, who after months of blocking debate which kept the levy in place, have now decided to put forward a plan for constant emergency levies at high rates. “We can raise levies whenever we want!” brazenly threatened one LU NEC member. They have refused to come up with a long-term plan for either pay restoration or indeed how to pay for the action to win it. In doing this, they risk keeping your pay low and leaving those members who do take action without the support of strike pay. In the debate, supporters of the General Secretary denigrated ADC and our union’s democracy, and drew out their opposition to giving members the opportunity for real debate and strategic discussion on a way forward. Instead, they proposed nothing more than running the same tactic again in future, and missing the chance to have a long-term sustainable inflow to build the Fighting Fund and keep it topped up, ready for action. For the IL, it could not be clearer – if we do not put enough money into the Fighting Fund in between periods of action, then temporary levies will be all but inevitable (and also higher than they might otherwise have needed to be). Of course, levies can also be avoided by refusing to take any action and PCS being left industrially impotent, another eventuality LU are content to be complacent about.

The Independent Left won the argument on NEC to support taking an alternative serious and realistic proposal to test with members at ADC that sets out how to have a properly maintained Fighting Fund that any member should have access to when out on strike, all by changing the current flat rate 50p contribution from subs to a 10% rate. Read our motion below:

Conference notes that the use of temporary, campaign-based levies has created a situation where funds have amassed that are not flexible enough to be used for the different industrial campaigns the union is fighting if they do not meet the stated aim of the levy at the point it was established.

Conference therefore agrees that:
1. These levies have created an unnecessary point of argument and confusion for members while creating a ‘start-stop’ approach to fighting fund replenishment which is unsustainable.
2. The current Fighting Fund contribution of 50p per month for most members is not sufficient to enable the Fighting Fund to support the amount of industrial action necessary to exercise leverage over many employers across our membership.
3. The current Fighting Fund contribution of 50p per month cannot change with inflation, or when the regular subscription rates change annually, because it is established by supplementary rule 3.14(d)
4. That changing this figure from 50p to a percentage of a member’s subscription would allow a more progressive and sustainable, permanent method of building the Fighting Fund.
5. That the appropriate figure for this contribution is 10%, which would raise approximately £2.7 million per annum for the Fighting Fund at current subscriptions rates.
6. That members except those in Band A (over £34,000) would pay less than £2 per month under this system.
7. That members in unrecognised workplaces should not contribute to the Fighting Fund, and should therefore be excluded from supplementary rule 3.14(d)

Conference therefore instructs the NEC to end any temporary levies currently in place under supplementary rule 7.11(j).

Conference further agrees to amend the rules of the Union to change the contribution to the Fighting Fund accordingly: 
1. In supplementary rule 3.14, subsection (d), after “Ordinary members”, insert “in recognised workplaces”. 
2. In supplementary rule 3.14, subsection (d), after “shall pay an additional”, replace “50 pence per month” with “10 percent of their subscription rate per month”. 

The second PCS Scottish Executive Committee conference was held in Glasgow on Friday 28th February 2025 – you can read our bulletin here, the Scottish Executive’s Annual Report here, and the motions book/agenda here (all A-marked motions were carried).

The results of the Scottish Executive Committee elections, as announced on 25th February were as follows:

Strike pay comes out of the Fighting Fund.

From May last year, members paid the levy into the FF. This raised around £550K each month. Separately, the default 50p per member (which is ringfenced out of regular subs) was also paid in. This brought in over £80K per month.

So since May 2024, from the regular contributions and the additional levy, the Fighting Fund received a total £630K or so a month. PCS has paid out well over £3M in strike pay in the same period!

For the striker, it is hardly going to matter to them whether their strike pay came from the levy or the 50 pence – money is money. And that’s true for the FF. It’s just one account and all the money is deposited into it. To claim as Left Unity do that there is a difference, you have to invent an accounting trick or illusion and divide the FF into two. Into one half goes the levy and into the other goes the 50 pence contributions.

It’s from the ’50 pence bit’ of the FF that it is claimed FM and other strikers are paid, not from the ‘levy bit’. The problem is that the strike pay being paid out is more than the £80K coming in from all those 50 pences. So it is also claimed that money is ‘borrowed’ from the levy half of the FF by the 50 pence half to pay the strikers…

We leave it to you to decide whether this is a way of evading the truth that money is money and the strikers’ pay is actually coming from the levy. Indeed even if you buy into all this accounting engineering, the strikers are being paid from the levy, even if you regard that pay as borrowed money.

This ‘borrowing’ means that the 50 pence half of the FF is increasingly in debt to the levy half. We estimate that the ‘debt’ is now over £1M and rapidly climbing.

In order for LU to maintain the pretence that the levy is not funding the strikes they claim that the debt will eventually be eradicated by transferring money from the General Account – this is where our subs and other income goes into – to the FF. Yet despite the increasing ‘debt’ they have not proposed any transfer of money from the General Account. Which is consistent with the reality that the levy is paying the strikers, and they know it.

IL instigated the debate over pausing and reviewing the levy and our votes were vital in actually getting the levy paused.  We did so even though we knew that the levy was in fact funding the action.

The problem with the levy is that it was unfairly structured and has continually been weaponised by LU. It was clear from the General Secretary’s craven videos and emails to members, openly using her position to attempt to influence the elections for LU, that it was not possible with the levy in place to have a rational discussion as to putting in suitable long term strike funding arrangements. That’s why we did what we did – to replace the temporary levy with a lower level permanent contribution, to minimise the need for any temporary levies in future.

Unlike LU who are deeply unserious, we accept the logic of our position and are in favour of moving money from the General Account to clear the ‘debt’ and also to pay, if necessary, for future action. This will run down the General Account, which is our rainy day money. The alternative is accepting LU accounting that allow the supposed debts to increase. This means LU will have to put a brake on action in order to keep the debts to sustainable levels. That is, they will be trapped by their own fiscal rules.

We know that LU will still claim they stopped the levy, despite the facts, but what they won’t do is propose what should replace it. The General Secretary, working only for LU’s interests and not those of members, has said that branches will be consulted on new strike funding arrangements, and that proposals will be brought to ADC 2026!

That might be OK if the world worked on LU time but in real world we have to urgently put something in place over the next months, in the run up to this year’s pay remit and to prove to the Government and ourselves we are serious about action if (or rather, when) offered a poor deal. IL don’t want to run down the General Account or run up more imaginary so-called ‘debts’. We will seek to work up and implement new proposals ASAP but that won’t happen unless the Coalition for Change slate and our joint platform is voted in for the NEC and for other elections.

LU as shown above are more interested in accounting games than winning for members, so let’s get rid of them and start a building a trade union worthy of the members.

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.