Tag Archives: union

An extraordinary National Executive Committee

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On Tuesday 4th June, PCS held its first NEC since a majority of candidates from the Coalition for Change, including IL members were elected. 

It was an extraordinary meeting, and not just because the NEC had not yet agreed its calendar for the year, but because of the way Left Unity, including the National President, conducted the meeting.

Or indeed didn’t conduct the meeting, because the meeting was a truncated one, suspended unilaterally by the President for over an hour, despite the pressing business this Union has before it. 

The President suspended the meeting because it could not agree standing orders (the rules governing how the meetings are run).

NEC members elected as part of the Coalition of Change slate had proposed a series of amendments to the standing orders such as making the NEC more accessible and removing gagging order preventing NEC members speaking to members publicly about debates.

IL have believed for years that NEC members being prohibited from reporting on NEC meetings is undemocratic, prevents accountability and removes a key method of engaging the membership on important decisions. 

We should be able talk to members about proceedings in a proportionate way, without undermining the communications strategy of the union; and to fulfil our elected mandate of democratising the NEC and the wider union so that a President who represents a minority of NEC members cannot ride roughshod over the majority. A copy of our proposed standing orders are below. 

Two of the key standing orders (SOs) we wished to amend were the ones concerning how amendments to standing orders are made, and another dealing with amendments to or motions on the same topic of papers moved by Senior Full Time Officers (SFTOs: the General Secretary and Assistant General Secretary). 

SOs 12.1-12.3 state that a two thirds majority is needed to adopt or amend the standing orders themselves. The Coalition moved an amendment that would mean only a simple majority was needed. This would be a democratic step that would attempt to avoid the farcical scenes we witnessed this week: where an NEC convened under standing orders that grant enormous and far-reaching discretion to a President who is himself a member of the NEC’s minority, and able to frustrate the majority with these powers. 

SO 11.4 states that amendments or motions counterposed to those moved by a SFTO, ‘shall not directly negative the substantive recommendations’. Who decides if they do? It is, of course, the President. Our proposed amendment would have allowed NEC members, with the same democratic mandate as the General Secretary (just not the £100k+ salary) to have their alternative papers and motions heard in general debate, with the NEC deciding democratically which was preferable.

The current standing orders allow the General Secretary and President to shoot down NEC-proposed motions on any given topic or issue simply by proposing their own, and then ruling “substantive recommendations had been negated”. You couldn’t make it up! 

Schrödinger’s Standing Orders

The NEC begins by agreeing its standing orders for the year. Because the new standing orders are not yet in place until agreed, the previous years are used to convene the first NEC meeting. The coalition began the debate by asking the President a question, if no standing orders were carried by a two thirds majority, would the previous years remain extant?

At first, the President, suggested they would. The coalition proposed our amendments, and while they were supported by a clear majority of 17 for and 14 against, they did not get a two thirds majority to be carried – the LU minority were obstructing what we believe is our democratic mandate for change.

When the Left Unity minority lost their motion to keep 2023’s standing orders (again 14-17) the President changed his mind. Apparently, the NEC cannot continue until there are new SOs agreed. Why the Damascene conversion? We believe, for factional reasons.

This is despite the fact that principal rule 8 and supplementary rules 7.1,  7.11, and 7.12 do not imply the need for standing orders – the NEC can conduct its business as it sees fit, within the rules. Sometimes the rules are silent – and that silence is the President’s discretion. But, their silence is for the NEC to determine. Rather than allow this, the President suspended the highest democratic body of the Union at a time when there were (and indeed are) vital issues that must be decided.

Successes for the coalition

After twiddling our thumbs for an hour, while refusing to leave the NEC Zoom to make sure we knew if the meeting was reconvened (we certainly weren’t told when it was going to happen) the Coalition reluctantly adopted the existing standing orders without being able to pass our vital amendments.

We collectively decided that it was more important to get to the substantive business of the membership. Th coalition reserve the right to attempt to democratise the Standing Orders in the future, and it’s likely that rule change motions to next year’s Annual Conference will be put.

Unfortunately, the President had other ideas, and immediately ruled that proposed changes to the NEC’s domestic arrangements, which would have made papers more accessible for disabled members, were not up for discussion. 

We then moved to business which couldn’t allow Left Unity to invoke super-majorities and abuse of Presidential discretion to subvert the majority.

Firstly, the allocation of sub-committees. The Coalition, committed to a democratic, radical union and industrial strategy now have a majority on the NEC’s key committees. These include the Policy and Resources Committee which sets the Union’s strategic direction, the UK Civil Service Bargaining Committee which directs negotiations with the Cabinet Office, and the Organising committee which we want to use to develop an ambitious plan to grow and strengthen the membership after years of decline.

The National Disputes Committee, which decides on industrial action, is made up of the President, Deputy and Vice Presidents, the General Secretary and Assistant General Secretary, now also has a Coalition majority.  This will be key in setting a program of action, selective or otherwise, which makes the most of our mandate while we assess and prepare to re-ballot other employers.

Next, the meeting then moved to General Election strategy. The General Secretary spent an unreasonably long time basically reciting their milquetoast paper on the topic. The PCS website has some initial details of the Union’s non-committal approach. If you’re expecting the information that it states is forthcoming to be much more scintillating… then you are likely to be disappointed.

There were another three motions from Coalition NEC members on alternative General Election strategy – which would have reaffirmed the right of branches to back candidates who had a track record of supporting our demands and values, with NEC approval, and in two cases stated the simple fact that it was likely Labour would win and that, while we are under no illusions that Starmer will enact socialism, his party in government would be preferable to another five years of the Tories.

The President ruled them out of order as is his prerogative under the undemocratic Standing Orders of the NEC.

An utterly bizarre decision. Annual Conference was not able to discuss the wider General Election strategy and now the NEC has also been prevented from doing so.

Nonetheless, an IL motion was heard and unanimously passed which will inject some reality into PCS’ political strategy at this critical time. After IL motion A12 was overwhelmingly carried at ADC, this motion called on the General Secretary to rapidly carry out its instructions and write to the Labour Party stating our industrial demands, asking for their commitment to them, and that they urgently meet with us, informing the membership of the responses we receive, or Labour’s silence.

The Coalition is clear – this is a NEC which will be active, radical, democratic, and not work in isolation – every motion will include instructions for the General Secretary to consult with and update groups, regions and branches – the true democratic locus of our union. 

PCS Left Unit have labelled us the ‘Coalition of Chaos’. The NEC meeting demonstrated that we constitute a cohesive majority. We will have disagreements, this is healthy, but we have a passion for delivering our programme for the membership and we will continue to push for it regardless of the bureaucratic blockers placed in our path.

Centralism without democracy

But it won’t always be easy. We planned to use the first NEC meeting to demand detailed updates on the National Campaign, and on what was being done to assist the sacked HMRC reps at Benton Park View, neither of which were on the agenda. Indeed, the President only accepted that the victimised reps should be discussed as part of Any Other Business after Coalition for Change NEC members wrote to him en masse to request they were.

However, due to the President’s suspension of the NEC and his insistence that the meeting had a ‘hard finish’ we didn’t get to them. We are now hoping to hear about another extraordinary NEC this month to deal with this and other issues. If we don’t hear, then the majority will demand one, as is our right under the standing orders.

During the NEC elections, we joked that Left Unity were practising the old Stalinist gospel of democratic centralism without democracy. This has now been proven, with the National President presiding over the NEC not for the benefit of the Union, but the minority faction.

Have no fear. The Independent Left has remained committed to principles set out in our manifesto for over a decade – if you want to support our campaign to make this a democratic union that wins victories by empowering lay reps, you should join us.

PCS NEC election results: A win for the Coalition for Change

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The PCS NEC election results have now been published.

The Coalition for Change, which brought together the PCS Independent Left (IL), Broad Left Network (BLN) and other groups and independents, has secured a clear NEC majority on a principled programme that addresses the key issues facing members and our trade union.

We thank the many branches that nominated Change candidates, the activists and members who voted and campaigned for them, and all the members who took part in PCS’ democracy.

Members have clearly voted for change in these NEC elections, confirming the mood for radical change within PCS that was evidenced during last year’s senior officer elections.

There is a great deal of work to be done by the incoming NEC, not least because:

  • Civil Service pay is in unprecedented long term decline.
  • Tens of thousands of members are stuck on and near the legal minimum wage.
  • The civil service is strong arming members into office working pattens that are unnecessary and discriminatory.
  • Non-civil service members all too often have poor terms and conditions, woeful employer regimes, and are under organised and under supported by national union. 
  • Membership levels are too low, damaging our leverage.

The Coalition NEC members cannot overnight put right all that has been put right wrong, but they can and will start that work.

Our most immediate challenge is to respond to the results of the civil service wide ballots on pay and other issues, which will conclude on 13 May.  It is unfortunate that we will have to undertake that task when the decisions of Left Unity NEC members and senior PCS officials have left our union in a weaker position today than we were in a year ago, but it is vital that PCS begins to rebuild the purchasing power of our wages.

Independent Left NEC members will:

  • Seek sharp debates on policy issues and collaborative working on delivering for members.
  • Place equality genuinely at the heart of everything PCS does.
  • Seek to end the spin culture that has too long dominated PCS and insist on timely, comprehensive, national negotiating reports to members.
  • Never forget that the lives of PCS members are affected by events outside of our workplaces and that social and international solidarity must be a PCS lode star.

IL supporters have long played a critical role in PCS. We pioneered equality impact assessments of employer policies; established that the Crown is the legal employer of all civil servants; pioneered cross departmental equal pay claims; led fightbacks against office closures; argued alone for many years that a Fighting Fund War Chest and paid selective action must be vital parts of PCS’ armoury; sought the contractualisation of terms and conditions so that they cannot be arbitrarily changed by our employer, and have long fought for a membership led union. Please join us.

Mark Serwotka attacks union activists but makes a key admission

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Once upon a time, the General Secretary would be provided with column inches in major newspapers like the Guardian and Independent to promote the interests of members and articulate the unions positions. Now, with the waning of our influence, the self-imposed collapse of our national dispute, the haemorrhaging of membership in the civil service and the lowest pay offer in the public sector, the relevance of our voice and the resulting offers of air time has dwindled.

It is somewhat telling, and not a little disheartening, that the end of his 23-year stint as head of the union is marked not by rallying calls to members and attacks on the government on TV and popular media, but by misleading claims about members’ pay and attacks on his own members in much smaller left-wing publications.

The most explicit example of this being this recent interview with the tribune magazine following the result of the pay strategy ballot.

More money from the government than in 40 years of the union?

In this interview, Mark attempts to justify shutting down the dispute on the basis that the 4.5% pay increase – the lowest in the public sector – was “more money from the government for the first time in 40 years”.

Of course, in purely percentage terms this is correct. However, the leadership mighty want to consider for a moment whether such a low percentage is something to be so publicly boastful of, considering they have been in control of the union for over half that time.

No, the obvious problem with this justification is that in real terms it’s a much worse settlement for members than in many of the last 20 years. Members are much worse off with the deal relative to the rise in the cost of living than in decades. Mark’s no fool – he understands how inflation works – but without a genuine reason for abandoning the dispute, obfuscation and spin that is well removed from the reality of the material conditions of his members, is the last refuge.

Not that Mark personally will have felt the pinch, after all, the subs of all members, including those who remain on the breadline, are contributing to his £100k salary and will continue to fund his significant pension well after he’s left.

“Being radical without representing the members”?

Whether prompted or not – we are convinced the former – the interviewer goes on to ask Mark why he’s supporting Fran Heathcote as his successor.

In a 7 paragraph response, which we can assume has been edited down, there is not a single reference to a policy or idea that Fran is putting forward to members.

Instead, it appears that the sole reasons for members to support Fran are 3-fold.

Firstly, that she’s a woman: But so is her opponent, Marion Lloyd.

Secondly, that she has shared responsibility for the state the union is currently in: a haemorrhaging density rate and the lowest % membership in the civil service in over half a century.

And lastly, that she is the joint architect of the strategy and outcome of the recent pay dispute – where, not to labour the point, the leadership won the worse pay deal in the public sector, nay entire economy.

In a nutshell, Vote Fran and Paul for more of the same. Are you not inspired?

With that taking up about 2 paragraphs, Mark spends the remainder of his answer to that question attacking his own members.

He talks about the “sectarianism from small elements… making the mistake of being radical without necessarily representing the people they’re there to represent”. Further stating that “the people in our union making the most noise hadn’t been on strike for a single day because they’d failed to get over the threshold”.

This attack line has been used previously by Mark within the union, but it’s the first time to our knowledge he’s been willing to publicly attack members.

Firstly, it’s demonstrably a lie. The author of this article was on strike, as were the overwhelming majority of Independent Left activists, in groups and branches which got over the threshold. But the attack is not only on Mark’s factional opponents.

There are many branches and activists who joined the PCS Say No campaign for example who were not connected to any faction, indeed there were activists who were members of the leadership faction, Left Unity who took part. We are aware of correspondence from these branches to Mark, left unanswered, raising concerns following huge members meetings on the direction of the dispute.

Entire regions of the union, notably the London and South East Region, with branches representing over 25% of the entire union membership, who organised the largest, most vibrant pickets and rally’s on strike days, voted unanimously at their AGM for a motion criticising the strategy of the leadership.

Attacking those branches and groups who failed to get over the threshold is equally irksome.

Obviously, we want maximum engagement with members, including in ballot turnouts. But the turnout threshold exists as part of Tory anti-union legislation meant to block unions from taking action. To valorise such legislation, which has prevented his own members from taking action, as a means to attack opponents is a right-wing attack line, more akin to the pages of The Sun and Daily Mail than the words of a notionally left-wing general secretary speaking to a left-wing publication.

Equally, the most disorganised areas of the union are not influenced by those Mark opposes, but those he supports. The Justice Group for example, long the base for Mark and Left Unity’s long-term allies, the PCS Democrats is an organisational basket case. Despite having some of the lowest paid, proletarian workers in the civil service, they not only spectacularly failed to get close to the threshold but have one of the lowest density rates at below 30%.

We are not gleeful about this situation, indeed we are supporting candidates who want to do something about it, but it demonstrates the hypocrisy of the attack-line. Where is the public criticism of his allies?

Why now?

With retirement in 3 months’ time, Mark has no incentive to maintain accountability. And without any significant policy deviation from the current leadership, it makes sense for them to instead rely on personal and ad-hominem attacks and slander against their opponents, hoping some of it sticks. We are dismayed but expect more of the same in the months ahead.

“If I had a regret if would be that it took us as long as it did to devise a strategy of industrial action that was finally effective”.

If members take away a single quote from this election period, if there is one sentence which will persuade you to vote for the alternative, it’s this one.

It is the closest we have got to an admission that over the past 20 years, the Independent Left were right about industrial strategy, and the leadership were wrong.

In the interview, Mark admits that both targeted action and the strike levy are key strategic choices which should have been used much earlier.

Both are things we have argued for years in branches and at conference, and each time were rejected by Mark and Fran and the Left Unity leadership.

The one-day strikes our members have taken for years – ineffective. The refusal to implement a strike levy until this year – ineffective. If we had been using effective targeted for decades we’d be in a much better industrial position. If we’d had a levy for decades, we’d have a war chest capable of supporting much more industrial action.

If our leaders are telling us they got the strategy wrong for so long and we have a choice to vote for those who got it right, we shouldn’t waste the opportunity.

If you agree, nominate and vote for Marion Lloyd for General Secretary and John Moloney for Assistant General Secretary.

The £1500 ‘settlement’ is unfunded: Why it matters

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The £1500 being offered to civil servants is not funded by new money. Departments have to find the money from existing budgets to pay it. Bizarrely the union seems to have made no effort in negotiations to ensure it is funded. In a future posting, we will talk more of these so-called negotiations.

Both the teacher’s union (NEU) and the healthcare unions have centralised as a core demand that any pay increase or bonus is funded by new money. The importance of fore-fronting this demand is clear:

  • Schools, NHS Trusts – and government departments and agencies -would have to fund all the money out of existing budgets, meaning a further degradation of public services. In a Department like the DWP, the cost of payment will be close to £130m. That’s money being taken from the delivery of public services to the most vulnerable.
  • With no guarantee on redundancies other than they would ‘avoid where possible’, employers may attempt to cover the cost by reducing headcount and/or closing offices.

In both education and healthcare, the government have conceded to either fully or partially funded the offer with new money.

We are already aware of one agency, Audit Wales, claiming they can’t afford to pay the money. Rightfully the union is approving strike action there, but still has not demanded the Cabinet Office fund it. Why not?

Other departments could claim the same thing, or could implement restrictions on who is eligible for the cash, such as pro-raftering the payment for part-timers or restricting eligibility on the basis of time-in-post as many are attempting.

Added to the litany of other issues, this is yet another reason why the dispute needs to continue.

We should also remember that nurses and teachers have voted to reject better or comparable settlements that were at least partially funded by new money unlike this one.

PCS Independent Left believe we should bank this money which is being given regardless of whether we end the dispute or not, and we should therefore continue the fight alongside other public sector workers. If you think what we say makes sense, why not join us?