Our manifesto outlines in detail how we want to transform our union. The manifesto was first launched during Bev Laidlaw’s bid to become General Secretary in the 2019 elections.
Click ‘read more’ under each section below to see the details of my proposals, or download the full manifesto as a printable booklet in PDF format or in .doc format.
1 INDUSTRIAL DEMANDS
Civil service pay has stagnated over the last decade and there is chronic low pay in the administrative grades, yet PCS has failed in two successive ballots to deliver a 50%+ turnout and thus a legal mandate for industrial action. This is fundamentally an organising issue, but we also need to be clear what we want in relation to pay and other industrial demands. We stand for: Read more
2 EQUALITY
“Equality at the heart of everything we do” needs to be more than a slogan. PCS has strong equality structures at all levels of the union, but there is often a disconnect between these structures and the broader work of the union. This needs to be addressed so that the slogan becomes a reality. Read more
3 BUILDING THE UNION
PCS’s membership is in crisis. The union has a target of achieving 200,000 members by 2020 yet has fewer members now than when it set that target. Cuts to the civil services, currently spear-headed by the aggressive office closure programme, are a key part of this reduction. However, PCS faces the same challenges as other unions in a changing workplace environment, with the age demographic of the membership not necessarily reflecting that of the workforce. Meeting this challenge head on will require several measures: Read more
4 FOR AN ACCOUNTABLE, TRANSPARENT, DEMOCRATIC UNION STRUCTURE
PCS’s full-time apparatus is far removed from its lay membership. This is not a fault of individuals amongst the union staff but a structural issue due to the way that the union is set up. As an organisation which believes that ours should be a lay-led union, with members firmly in the driving seat, we propose to address this as follows: Read more
5 POLITICS
Our union cannot remain neutral on political questions. Not only does politics have a direct impact on the job we do, on whether our jobs are secure, on the pay rise we are offered, and so on, it also shapes our lives as working class people and the communities that we live in. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and ableism are rooted in the dominant politics of our society, and as a class we need to have an answer to that. Read more
PCS Independent Left 