The coalition of reps and members standing in this years NEC and Group elections for positive change in the union have organised a launch meeting.
Come and hear from our Presidential and NEC candidates about our vision and how we believe we can win on pay, pensions, jobs and re-build the union.
Join the Zoom meeting gat 19:00 on the 17th of April. Link below.
On Friday, the GMB announced the result of their statutory strike ballot of members on the DWP G4S contract, which supplies security guards and receptionist facilities to DWP sites.
This ballot is as a consequence of a derisory 2 year pay offer by the company to some of the lowest paid workers in civil service buildings. Namely, 5.15% with effect from 1 December 2022 and 6.5% from 1st April 2023.
The result is a resounding ‘yes’ for strike action on a threshold-busting turnout.
For nearly a year, PCS branches in London have been pushing for the group to ballot G4S members on pay, as well as other demands, laid-out in the NECs recommendation for Facilities Management demands, including demanding joint recognition for PCS. These demands and indicative votes for action took place in a number of DWP branches in London.
Before the announcement of GMB’s ballot, multiple approaches to the National Dispute Committee Secretary was made. The DWP Group were allowed to stonewall the requests. Claiming varyingly that because the union didn’t have many members in regions outside of London and that PCS wasn’t recognised, there would be no point in balloting.
There is some truth in these excuses. The DWP London region of the union have been the only region which has consistently taken up the national unions organising strategy of building industrially in our workplaces and recruiting, representing and organising security guards. This is demonstrated by the fact that of all DWP G4S guards in PCS, nearly half are in London.
Equally, it is true that PCS is currently unrecognised by G4S. But unregognised unions strike all the time, and we rightly have the ambition to be an industrial union, where all who work in our workplaces are in the same union. We also have the ambition for all staff to be brought back in-house, upon which they would be represented by PCS.
The point made by London branches at the time was, If GMB aren’t taking action, and we won’t take any action, then these members essentially have no way to express their agency against a super exploitative employer.
The surprising and out-of-character decision by GMB to ballot their members changed all that.
After the ballot was announced the branches got back in touch with the NDC, outlining the fact that the previous reasons no longer held water (if they ever did) and that PCS were now in the risky position of not balloting our members when the other union were and consequentially could be in a position where some guards had a mandate, and were asked to strike, and ours weren’t.
The Groups response was to hold centralised members meetings (despite some London branches holding well engaged with indicative ballots) and resolving to simply tell the GMB that they will ‘help support them’. Essentially, refusing to allow our members on the contract the ability to vote to join their GMB counterparts in strike action.
Now the GMB result is out, all this has come to pass and we are in the position of either telling our PCS members to join GMB to join any action or potentially our members being asked to cross a GMB picket line.
Either option is shameful and by definition brings PCS into disrepute.
We urge DWP branches to write to the Group expressing discontent with this situation.
Tellingly, motions from London branches to DWP Group conference on this issue, asking for support for these members has been blocked from the agenda, with the standing orders committee not articulating to branches why this is.
Branches who belive in industrial unionism and who support the national unions strategy regarding organising outsourced workers should support reference backs on these motions and any emergency motions which are now submitted.
Members who agree should argue for this in their mandating meetings and vote for an alternative DWP Group leadership in the upcoming National and Group elections.
The PCS NEC met last week to discuss last minute proposals from the General Secretary for this year’s national campaign strategy.
Observant members will notice that last year’s national campaign, which we were told was merely ‘paused’ has, as we predicted, been swept under the carpet, never to be spoken of again. But as a reminder – we settled on the lowest pay offer in the public sector and a £1500 bonus which the failed candidate for Assistant General Secretary told bargaining units to accept being paid pro-rata’d.
The NEC decided on a pay-claim and a national consultative ballot for strike action, which they have described as a ‘survey’, which would be carried out over 2-weeks from the 20th of February, which may or may not result in a disaggregated Civil Service statutory ballot before May.
Ballot timetable
To put this in context, branches were asked to agitate around a consultative ballot on pay, which would commence less than a week after it was announced, would last only 10 working-days and who’s demands have been sprung on members and activists at the last minute without any consultation or rationale.
The formula of a short, rushed consultative ballot with little preparation time and minimal rank-and-file engagement, followed by the potential of a statutory ballot if the response is positive is paint-by-numbers Left Unity industrial strategy. But this timetable is particularly galling.
Such a rushed ballot strategy presents 3 key issues:
Firstly, the incompetent administration of the ballot is already causing problems. From members not being sent the links on the day the ballot started, to being asked for their National Insurance Number rather than membership number to vote and hosting the ballot site on a none ‘https’ secure server. All are unnecessary barriers to participation and will reduce turnout.
Secondly, a predictably poor turnout does not provide an accurate measure of members feelings. It also provides those who would rather not move to a statutory ballot the ammunition to argue that members are not sufficiently prepared for action. The leadership have used this argument previously not to move to a statutory ballot and we should be conscious this may be the case again.
Thirdly, running potentially 2 ballots in such a short space of time is a recipe for unnecessary confusion and fatigue among members and activists. Members are potentially being asked to take part in two ballots, asking the same question within weeks of each other, and activists are being asked to turnout the vote twice over. As both ballots are conducted in different ways, more confusion is likely.
The Academic Study
The foundation of the pay claim was an academic study commissioned by the union on pay trends in the civil service overtime, but specifically since 2007. For transparency, we attach the study at the bottom of this article.
This was received by the union in January, but not shared with the NEC until just before the meeting and not shared with branches until this week.
The study illustrates the serious loss in real-terms wages since 2007, summarising that just to restore real-term earnings to 2010 levels, an average of 35% pay increases at grades AA-EO would be required.
This figure does not surprise us. Independent Left comrades both in branches and on the NEC have consistently argued that pay restoration is a key demand and that to continually carry over the same pay claim year-on-year while pay shrinks, is a tacit endorsement of real term pay losses. Historically, this has been met with ridicule, with the leadership stating that members would find a 35% pay demand to be absurd.
Pay Restoration
They say good things come in groups of 3. During the last years national campaign, the union adopted 2 tactics we had been advancing for years. Namely selective/targeted action in areas which were industrially disruptive and a levy on members subs to ensure such action could be supported.
This year, the NEC has rightfully adopted the demand of pay restoration, although one could argue too little too late considering years of real-terms pay degradation.
Pay restoration is a key demand. It’s not an arbitrary percentage rise which has no basis in the material reality of members experiences, and which isn’t tied to the increase in the cost of living. It’s asserting the principle that workers’ salaries should at a bare minimum always keep up with the cost of living. It is good it’s finally been adopted.
Lowest paid left out
Why then, hasn’t the £15/r under-pin for our worst paid members been uprated? £15/hr was in the 2022 claim and since then, we’ve had historically high inflation. It would be excellent if we simply won on pay restoration, but if we don’t achieve that, the point of the underpin was to act as a separate bargaining point for our lowest paid.
They have been sadly ignored by this claim.
Hybrid working
Many thousands of our members have since the end of the pandemic, little choice by to attend the office daily, despite proving during the pandemic they were able to do much of their work from home.
One of the key issues for hybrid workers is the move to increase office attendance from 40% to 60%. This is a widely and deeply held grievance, which if included in the claim would help to increase participation.
For non-hybrid workers a specific demand advancing the principle for flexible working where possible should be included.
Exclusion of FM workers
Once again outsourced and facilities management workers are left out of the claim. We understand this pay claim is for Civil Service Workers, but there is no reason why the demands we’ve made nationally for our outsourced workers should not sit-beside them in a joint campaign.
As it is we have a national campaign, into which most of the union’s effort is focussed with a much more secondary and in many groups like the DWP, non-existent campaign for Facilities Management workers. Workers which hold significant industrial power in our workplaces and who through a coordinated campaign could bolster leverage for all members.
So, incompetence or sabotage? Or a mixture of both?
The question for us is, is this strategy designed to sabotage the campaign from the start or is it simply a poor, incompetent plan? We will give the new leadership the benefit of the doubt and go with the latter, but there may well be members of the leadership faction who do have the inclination or capability to fight an industrial campaign.
What is telling, is that numerous NEC members have admitted in various forums that they hadn’t even read the study before voting on the claim, preferring to simply accept the claim as presented by the general secretary. Whatever your faction, the role of an NEC member is to scrutinise decisions based on the total amount of evidence. It is depressing, but not surprising that NEC members do not think this is important.
Regardless, we have a lot of work to do over the next weeks to ensure the maximum membership turnout. Vote Yes to industrial action.
What’s the alternative?
If the aim is to have a live mandate by conference in order to be able to take action in a timely fashion during this year’s pay round, we should have begun the process much earlier, on the safe assumption that the pay-remit would not be acceptable to us.
As we are where we are, we believe a better option would be to use the coming weeks to continue to ensure the foundations in branches are prepared for a statutory ballot, not to agitate around a superfluous consultative ballot.
In terms of the claim, pay restoration is good (but needs to be explained to members), but the refusal to uprate the underpin and the omittance of one of the key workplace issues of the day – flexible working – are serious oversights which could have been caught if the process wasn’t so rushed or we had a different leadership.
In one of his last acts in office, outgoing General Secretary Mark Serwotka issued Branch Bulletin BB-006-24.
In the BB he states, “On 7 February 2023, the government (that is the UK government) published a policy paper announcing a number of machinery of government changes” and as a result of this ‘There are also knock-on effects to arrangements currently existing in PCS groups and sectors, in particular the Public Sector Group and the Scottish and Welsh sectors…’ He goes on to claim, “The need for decisions is pressing given that the employer has established its new structures, thereby rendering ours unfit for purpose.”
This decision has created uproar with the GEC and activists of the Scottish Government Group, who say they have not been consulted, and that the announcement that their Group will be no more has come as a complete shock to them. Plainly at least many activists in Scottish Group do not agree with the abolition of their Group and an unnecessary but wholly leadership driven internal PCS dispute has erupted.
Certainly the reasoning set out by Mr Serwotka make no sense in relation to the Scottish Government Group. After all, what have changes in the UK Civil Service, which he lists in the BB, have to do with the Scottish government? Those changes might mean that the ”need for decisions is pressing given that the employer has established its new structures, thereby rendering ours unfit for purpose” for the affected UK departments, but not for the Scottish Government Group.
The IL can see an argument for setting up a Scottish Sector Group to push forward the fight for national pay, terms and conditions of all those organisations that are directly funded by the Scottish Government but that is not what Mr Serwotka is saying. He claims changes in the UK Civil Service mean the Scottish Government Group must be abolished. Logic and detail were never Mr Serwotka’s strong point as this, his parting shot shows.
The Independent Left stands solidly behind those calling for the whole exercise to be stopped, so that the review of structures can take place without pressure. Trade Union leaders who have not morphed into 100% bureaucrats would understand that major union decisions will be most successfully implemented, and will best serve members, if the representatives and members affected believe they are not confronted with a fait accompli, are genuinely consulted, and at least in their majority persuaded of the merits of the decisions. There is a democratic argument that any such changes be put to ADC and in any case a membership vote.
Whilst the NEC might have the arbitrary power to scrap and create groups without consultation, they should not, not only in this instance but in all other instances. They should draw back from their decision and commence a thorough consultation with all affected representatives and members starting with the relevant highest committees: national officials and the NEC should not seek to bypass Group Executive Committees.
If the Left Unity cabal that actually run PCS are true to form they will try and cast this dispute into one of malign forces operating behind the scene creating an artificial upset. Nothing could be further from the truth. The outrage is genuine and is a response to what people see as a fait accompli, an undemocratic act.
If the NEC ploughs on with the forcible shutting down of the Scottish Government Group then we will support any suitable motion brought to ADC 2024. Let’s have a democratic debate there.
Last but certainly not least, this instance, and others, throw up whether the current constitution is fit for purpose and whether it should be wholesale brought up to date (it is decades old) and in line with that of a membership led union. The IL has argued that representatives of members working for the Scottish Government should have more power within PCS and the current dispute reinforces that view.
The union in DWP is dying. The proportion of members in the union is the lowest in living memory and continues to fall. To reverse this, we need to become relevant to the needs of members and begin to fight and win on issues specific to our members in DWP. We also need an independent industrial strategy which includes targeted paid strike action and action short of strike where necessary to win. If you agree with us, please nominate and vote for these candidates in the upcoming DWP Group Executive elections.
For a proper campaign on Staffing
DWP are recruiting into UC, but it’s too little too late. The union needs to urgently address the worsening staff to manager ratio. At present this is anything up to 1:15 – at this rate managers are unable to provide the support staff require. We will demand this is reduced urgently to 1:10.
We are acutely aware of overcrowding in many Jobcentres, leading to a stressful and unsafe working environment. There is no room on the ever-shrinking estate for the staff they want to recruit, let alone the amount we need. We will negotiate for proper, flexible and hybrid working for staff and demand the re-opening of appropriate REEP sites to better serve our staff and our communities.
The principle of Flexible working
Staff should have the ultimate flexibility to choose to work from home or the office, including operational staff where this can be enabled by technology. When we stepped-up and delivered during the pandemic, we proved that this was possible.
For most job roles, a policy of mandating any arbitrary percentage in the office is unnecessary, unworkable and inequal.
The current leadership did little to oppose the implementation of the arbitrary 40% office working dictat. We will organise an evidence-led campaign, including industrial pressure to oppose any attempt to increase 40% office attendance and to make the case for flexible working, based on workers choice for all staff where it can be enabled by technology.
A 4-day week
The principle of a 4-day week with no loss-in pay is a fast-growing demand with an increasing number of successful trials taking place across the world. Despite it being an overwhelmingly popular policy, the union has not attempted to negotiate with the DWP on this issue.
We will make demands on the employer for a trail of a 4-day week with no loss in pay, employing evidence from similar trials and the ever-growing number of academic papers conducted on the subject.
The use of Artificial Intelligence
The threat of Artificial Intelligence to our jobs is very real, but it doesn’t have to be. We will demand AI is only implemented in a way which serves citizens and staff, that reduces work, not jobs, and acts as an enabler for a reduction in the working week with no detriment to members.
We will start by immediately seeking an agreement with DWP that AI systems only be implemented with consultation with the union and that they should meet strict criteria on their use.
Organising outsourced workers
It’s essential that we organise our outsourced security, cleaning, and facilities management workers. These workers are some of the lowest paid in our workplaces with the worst terms and conditions, yet have some of the most industrial strength. Without them, our offices could not function.
Unfortunately, the union in DWP do not share this view. In London, reps have recruited more than half of all PCS organised G4S guards on the DWP contract in the UK. Last year members formed demands on pay, holiday & sickness allowances and union recognition and voted to strike.
The DWP Group leadership blocked them from carrying out a statutory ballot. The reasons given were that they hadn’t recruited outside of London and that it would anger the GMB.
We will support these members to strike and use their willingness to fight to recruit outsourced workers across the UK to join the action. Action they can’t take in the GMB as they signed a no-strike agreement!
Pay and the Employee Deal
It’s been 8 years since the start of the Employee Deal and we are still feeling the hurt. This leadership permanently sold our weekends and evenings to the employer for a pay deal which has now been totally wiped-out by the rise in the cost of living.
Anyone who works in Jobcentre or Service Centre understands that is no legitimate business need to keep staff away from their friends and family on a Saturday. The 2-tier workforce created between those who must and those who don’t is an affront to basic trade union principles.
Having supported the Employee Deal, the current leadership feel unable to revisit this with the employer. Having been against it from the start, we have no such qualms. As part of a wide DWP campaign on flexible working and a reduction in hours we will renegotiate ED and include demands to reduce and phase out Saturday working, to be supported by industrial action including action short of a strike where appropriate.
During last years campaign for General and Assistant General Secretary, a broad coalition of union members and activists was built around a common platform. A platform which stated confidently
that the union could be far more effective in fighting for members interests, much more democratic
and transparent and that understood the desperate need to rebuild the union from a historic low
membership. A positive programme based on alternative and creative forms of industrial strategy,
organising and communication.
Despite the union machine working against this coalition, John Moloney won more votes than any
other candidate and was elected as the unions Assistant General Secretary and Marion Lloyd came
closer than anyone previously to winning General Secretary from the leadership group.
But we cannot change the union without winning the leadership of the union – the National
Executive Committee.
Since the election, individuals, and organisations involved in this coalition, including the Independent
Left, Broad Left Network, the Reform group and the Rank-and-File Network, have worked together
to agree a joint programme based on that of the GS and AGS election and a joint slate of candidates.
These candidates come from across the length and breadth of the UK and from across civil service
departments and the commercial sector to challenge the leadership group who have controlled the
union for over 20 years.
We present this programme and slate of candidates here. As with last years election, the first challenge is to secure as many branch nominations as possible. If you agree with the programme, please ensure you nominate this slate of candidates through your branch AGM. If you haven’t already, you should have received an invite and instructions on how to make nominations through a branch officer. If you are not sure, get in touch with your branch secretary or send us a message.
PCS Independent Left and the other organisations involved will be making other materials available during the campaign. Please check back here for updates.
PCS Independent Left 