We’ve said before that our opponents in the current NEC elections, Left Unity, are lacking in ideas of how the union might win for members.

Read their website if you don’t believe us. Wondering what LU will do about pay? Don’t worry, they’ll reach ‘an agreement on pay which restores members living standards to a decent level, tackling the scourge of low pay once and for all’. How? Unclear, and we would suggest they don’t know either. God knows they had 20 years to find a way, and have so far failed to arrive on something, anything. Perhaps because having a plan would entail them actually doing something, an anathema to a group of people who view trade unionism as a way to avoid work. 

They’ve tried nothing, and they’re all out of ideas.

So instead, in this election cycle, LU have dispensed with subtleties and have decided to engage in some good, ol’ fashioned pork barrel politics.

LU were planning for this year’s election to be all about pausing the levy – the levy that they previously introduced and which suddenly became an injustice to members when they didn’t have control of the union, and whilst the General Secretary and her coterie were doing everything they could to avoid industrial action during and after the General Election – sitting on leverage submissions that should have gone to the National Disputes Committee and NEC, to avoid them being actioned.

The problem for LU was, in February, the IL, tired of the politicking and acknowledging that LU would do everything they could to stymie the national campaign, paused the levy.

So, lacking an election slogan, LU has decided that ‘If elected, we will refund the levy’ (since September).

How much will this cost? And how will the Fighting Fund be effected?

LU likes to say that no money was paid out of the levy fund – this is untrue.

In 2024 the union expended £1,315,825 of levy funds on strike pay connected with the national campaign.

This leaves the levy fund (inclusive of sums collected under the previous LU levy of 2023) at £1,347,390.

Between September and December 2024 the levy collected £2,250,270, an average of around £562,568 per calendar month (we do not yet have accurate figures for January to March this year).

So, LU are proposing, should they win the election, to pay members some £3.9 million. More than double what remains in the levy account, and indeed a fair chunk of the £ 4,558,744 which is in the general fighting fund.

Before you even get into questions of practicalities (will you pay members who resigned? how? is there anything in the PCS rulebook that empowers the NEC to pay bungs?) ask yourself – if LU want to pay out 66% of the £5.9 million in the combined fighting fund accounts, leaving just £2 million in the accounts when the government are looking to cut jobs and give the rest of us a crap pay rise. It won’t be enough.

LU have no plans to attempt to amend the rule which sets out a 50p contribution to the Fighting Fund, and they have, for political reasons, made temporary levies poisonous. Sure, they could top up the fighting fund by drawing the £3.9 million from the general reserves, but that would leave those depleted too, after Heathcote has already bled them for her undemocratic staffing structure which saw her personally get a £12k pay rise.

And to what end? A payment of between £12 and £35, in exchange for your union ceasing to have sufficient funds to support strike action in a dispute.

Effectively what LU are saying indirectly they do not intend, or envisage fighting a national pay or jobs and conditions action this year.

Vote to end this madness

The Independent Left are not here to offer you ridiculous bungs – we opposed the taxable, pro-rated £1,500 quid ‘cost of living payment’ in 2023 which LU offered instead of a fight for decent pay rise; we oppose their (hopefully dishonest) promise to financially cripple our fighting fund for their electoral gain now.

Instead, we and our partners in the Coalition for Change offer an actual plan to make the union more democratic, build a campaign and fight the employer as they attempt to immiserate us further, and win a decent pay rise.

This NEC election is a simple choice between the Coalition for Change, who want a better union, one you deserve, or leaving Left Unity in control, which means more stagnation and no effective resistance.