Members elect the NEC to carry the responsibility for scrutinising the budget of the union and how your subs are spent.

At the NEC on the 7^th of November, at hours’ notice, the meeting was asked to endorse a set of budgetary parameters.

In short, the NEC majority was not prepared to endorse a set of budgetary parameters, presented to the NEC on the day of the meeting, which ignored the recommendations of the unions finance committee and which coupled with a potential pause of the levy, created a blackhole for the fighting fund, rebalanced money away from services towards an unscrutinised staffing re-structure and demanded an additional 5% in membership subscriptions from members to pay for it.

Following the meeting the Left Unity minority on the NEC posted a series of denunciations online of those NEC members opposed to these parameters.

As it happened the General Secretary, following opposition to some or all of the parameters from members across the political divide, withdrew them. So, for all the bluster, the NEC reached unanimous agreement on the way forward.

However, if this hadn’t happened the NEC majority had called for them to be remitted. We would like to offer to reps and members, with evidence and context, our rationale for doing so.

Members and reps deserve to know what your subs are being used for.

The uniliteral imposition of a new staffing structure

In a union where thousands of our members are on the minimum wage, Left Unity’s priority is to create 2 new ‘super-grade’ roles at salaries far more than the average member, and indeed, in excess of all existing full-time officers of the union.

The NEC on the 7^th of November was the earliest opportunity we’ve had a finance paper which reflects the financial impact of this decision and the consequential balance of members money being spent on it.

Below are the top salary bands of PCS employees in 2023 from the publicly available 2024 Financial Report. The new ‘super-grade’ (B6a) sits between the top of B6 and within the B7 scale.

The successful candidates for both new positions were coincidently long-term allies of the General Secretary and supporters of Left Unity. They have seen massive pay increases.

For context, the General Secretary is the only staff member who takes home the top B7 band, as Assistant General Secretary John Moloney continues his election pledge to only take the wage of an average PCS member.

These changes represent an ongoing liability for PCS members, and a permanent increase in the balance of membership subs paid on staffing. A liability, as Table 1 below illustrates which represents an additional 55p plus a month per member than last year. And that’s in August, the number is likely to increase.

(Again, the union’s finances are a matter of public record)

The strategic decision to alter the structure of the union and expand the staffing budget was not scrutinised by the NEC as it should have been before it was introduced.

We were not prepared to endorse this rebalance of the union’s finances away from services and onto new, highly remunerated staff.

It is worth stating that the staff union, GMB were rightly consulted on the changes and accepted them. But there is a significant democratic deficit when the GMB have more of an say over how your subs are spent than the elected PCS National Executive Committee, accountable to you.

The levy

£900k has been spent from the general fighting fund to fund the courageous and escalating action of our FM members across departments. There is consequently an over £100k deficit in that account.

As you can see below, the additional levy is in the black. The only way we can continue to sustain funding for FM dispute is to borrow against this account.

With or without the levy we must find a way to fund current and future action, or we stop it.

Left Unity would simply have us cancel a sustainable source of funding completely.

We have consistently proposed reducing and reconstituting the levy. But if we want to continue to fund and grow these disputes, as the coalition does, we need to fund them.

Where do Left Unity propose to get this money? Or do they want to wind down the outsourced workers action?

Not only would Left Unity have us cancel the levy, but they also want us to fund their unnecessary and unaccountable additional staff burden with no new money.

Increase membership subs?

The unions Finance Committee, which contains a majority of Coalition for Change members, refused to recommend a members subs increase to the NEC. However, the paper presented to the NEC by the General Secretary ignored this and recommended a 5% increase from January.

There was rightfully opposition from Left Unity members at the NEC to this proposal and thankfully the General Secretary on considering the opposition agreed to withdraw the recommendations.

The question for Left Unity comrades now is, how do you want to fund the General Secretaries new staffing structure alongside the – hopefully increased – action of PCS FM workers?

We don’t accept increasing the subs you pay to the union to fund these unnecessary new, super-paid members of union staff.

Keep the Levy vs increases unions subs

The levy and the remainder of the budget of the union, paid for by the bulk of your subs are separate things.

The levy is earmarked for supporting industrial action, members know where that money is going. The rest of the budget is around agreeing a set of spending priorities which are often strategic and political.

As mentioned, the majority of the NEC doesn’t agree the spending priorities of the General Secretary, which have been imposed unilaterally, without scrutiny.

It’s our responsibility as the custodians of the unions finances to continue to argue this point.

‘Tory austerity’?

Left Unity claim that refusing to endorse their budget is akin to ‘Tory Austerity’.

To be absolutely clear, the union is not the same as the Government. The union cannot print money, sell bonds or raise taxes on the rich. Nor is it a profit-making corporation.

PCS is a membership organisation, funded entirely by the subs of its members, many of whom are on the minimum wage.

We don’t believe that such insults or comparisons are correct or helpful. However, as they have now been levelled at us, we offer a more accurate analogy.

Members will remember the government using the pandemic as an excuse to agree wasteful contracts, furnishing their allies in the business world with £m contracts for worthless PPE without any parliamentary scrutiny.

We refuse to allow such unaccountable mismanagement to occur in PCS.

It is, of course also true that Left Unity have consistently voted for cuts in budgets and staff. When the union had to tighten budgets and cut staff when the impacts of check-off hit, did comrades cry ‘austerity’ or claim the budgets read like an employer paper or as claimed a Tory budget. Of course not.

‘Too honest’

IL supporters made these points in contributions to the debate at the NEC on the 7^th. We were criticised in the General Secretaries right of reply and in subsequent Left Unity articles for being ‘too honest’.

The NEC will will revisit the question of the budget at December’s meeting, but no member should expect that NEC members should roll-over and accept unilaterally imposed financial pressures on creating an even greater layer of staff to the detriment of members services.

We will make no apologies for doing so and will continue to be open, transparent and ‘too honest’ about the situation.