Thursday’s (11th June) NEC meeting should have been the first full, post-conference meeting of the union’s executive where important decisions would have been taken on implementing ADC policy, on pay remit talks, selecting NEC liaison officers for groups, establishing Sub-Committees and agreeing future meeting dates.
Instead of that productive work taking place, the meeting descended into farce and came to an abrupt end because the newly-elected National President and her coalition refused to accept the rules and procedures of the union and the union’s legal advice.
Standing Orders set the agenda and the parameters for meetings. The NEC cannot take place until the Standing orders are agreed, therefore they are adopted as the first item of business at the first NEC of the year. At the first meeting, the previous years are adopted to allow the meeting to progress, they can then be amended. This has been the case for over twenty years.
In the run-up to the 11 June NEC, the General Secretary met with the President ahead of the meeting, as is usual to discuss the agenda. The President conveyed that her faction wanted changes to the Standing Orders. As above, there is no issue with at in itself, but there must be Standing Orders in place to begin the meeting before amendments can be made.
Shockingly, despite her conversation with the General Secretary, at the outset of the 11th June meeting, the President made an untrue claim. She stated that she had made a ‘decision’ at the emergency NEC on 29th May, that she did not agree the previous year’s Standing Orders (in place for decades with amendments) to run for the current committee. She stated her ‘decision’ was not subject to any challenge at that time. The President continued that she had since advised the General Secretary in writing that she did not believe the Standing Orders from the dissolved NEC were binding on this NEC (11th June) and that was now her ruling.
The President stated that the required two-thirds majority was not required for her to make this ‘ruling’. No two-thirds agreement required to reject, amend or dismiss the Standing Orders, because she said so, and her coalition agreed. Rules and legal advice be damned. Trumpism is alive and well in PCS.
In truth, there was no challenge made to the ‘decision’ made by the President on 29th May, as there was no such decision or ruling made. There was an agreement between the President and the General Secretary that, as the meeting was convened for one item, that item being pay, the Standing Orders agenda item would be rolled over for agreement at the next meeting. That left the meeting moving under the previous Standing Orders.
At the 11th June meeting, after the President’s illegitimate ruling had been bounced through, with the meeting no more than five minutes in, a challenge was made to the ‘ruling’ having been made before Standing Orders were agreed. This was dismissed out of hand.
A point of order was then raised to argue that the Standing Orders could not be dismissed without a two-thirds majority, which had not been met. The President did not answer this point of order, losing control of the meeting she allowed a coalition member to shout out that there was no requirement for a ‘two-thirds’ as it was ‘a ruling’, further stating ‘you’, meaning the Democracy Alliance, needed the two-thirds to win. But the point of order was regarding the ‘ruling’ taking the NEC out of the constitutional process, moving to continue an NEC with no Standing Orders in place.
The President continued to argue that she could ignore the existing Standing Orders and changes could be adopted by a simple majority of the NEC.
The rules are crystal clear, in Standing Order 12.1: “The Standing Orders in existence will be used to convene the first post-election meeting of the NEC.”
Standing Order 12.2 is also clear “Adoption of these Standing Orders, or changes to the Standing Orders will be the first item of business for the NEC at its first
post– election meeting and if agreed, will take effect immediately. A two-thirds
majority of the votes cast will be required.”
Standing Order 12.3 is further clear, “changes to the Standing Orders once adopted will require a two-thirds majority of the votes cast”
It is telling that a recent statement put out by “the NEC majority” makes no mention of the rules or the legal advice that was circulated to all NEC members.
The truth of it is that, before the 11th June NEC took place, meetings had been held between the General Secretary and the President at which legal advice was presented from the union’s solicitors, confirming the position outlined by the General Secretary and in Standing Orders.
Further important points missed from the social media discourse thus far; the President, accompanied by the Assistant General Secretary, outlined five proposed changes. The General Secretary thought that four of the changes proposed could be agreeable to all sides – with some further discussion and compromise potentially over the fifth.
In a genuine effort to a find a way forward, the General Secretary offered to see if she could help facilitate a two-thirds majority for some or all of the changes the National President was seeking.
An offer was made by the General Secretary to try to broker an agreement among NEC members on that basis. The National President said that she would be prepared to accept such an accord.
However, when the General Secretary received the wording of the proposed changes it was clear they were far more extensive than had been described in the meeting. Not only that, Fran reported to the NEC that some of the proposed “provisions contravene the unions rules, cut across staff contractual provisions and potentially give rise to litigation against the union.”
It is clear to Left Unity and our PCS Democrat comrades that the General Secretary bent over backwards to find a way forward, holding meetings with the President, commissioning legal advice from the union’s solicitors and offering a compromise solution.
But all that was thrown back in her face at the meeting in a shameless power-grab, with the BLN/IL coalition NEC majority attempting to bulldoze through a change to Standing Orders without a two-thirds majority, in breach of the union’s rules and procedures.
This left the General Secretary with no choice under the union’s rules but to confirm that there was no basis upon which NEC business could proceed.
Despite the claims made, this is not a factional matter, it is the responsibility of the General Secretary, under the union’s rules. All elected Left Unity members of the NEC, and our allies in the Democrats, backed the General Secretary wholeheartedly in defending the union’s democracy.
Apparently, the President and some NEC members later convened an unconstituted meeting, a sham NEC without the General Secretary, the NEC members committed to democracy, or any union officials.
Such a meeting is outside the union’s rules and procedures and has no status. That is clear.
Twenty-five years ago, in events that parallel the events of this week, it was Left Unity members that upheld democracy against those seeking to undermine the union and its democratically elected General Secretary, Mark Serwotka.
The echoes from that dark period in PCS history are stark as a concerted attempt was made then to strip an elected General Secretary of their powers, with an attempt to impose a new set of Standing Orders and the convening of a sham NEC meeting claiming it to be legitimate.
This was exactly the approach adopted by the right-wing Barry Reamsbottom and his supporters. All of those undemocratic practices were quashed in the High Court. Sadly, some current PCS NEC members that claim to be socialists are now standing on the same ground as Reamsbottom and his acolytes.
Elected NEC members have important business to progress and have a great responsibility to protect and promote the interests of members, to implement union policy and to uphold the union’s rules and democracy. There can be no place for the student politics style game-playing we are seeing from the new NEC majority.
Unfortunately, it looks like the Broad Left Network (a Socialist Party front) and the Independent Left (a front for the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty) would rather cause chaos and play silly political games than promote and prioritise members best interests as they are duty bound to do. They are letting down the members who put their trust in them, and those members and activists who want to see a successful campaigning union.
Fallout from a “Sad Day for PCS”
There is understandably some confusion about these events, we have to say aided by obfuscation and deliberate misrepresentation by members and supporters of the NEC majority. Their social media posts focus on obscure points of procedure designed to steer members and activists from the political issues currently at stake for our union. The coalition that forms the NEC majority, we have said many times before, differ on many issues but for the one thing that unites them – their personal hatred of our elected General Secretary, her staff, and our faction Left Unity.
Their latest missives completely ignore the facts that the powers of the General Secretary, as well as the Principle Rules of the Union, and the Standing Orders for the conduct of NEC meetings are the same as those operated by Fran’s predecessor, Mark Serwotka, for many years without any attempt by these groups to challenge them and undermine them as they are seeking to do now.
To attempt to not only do away with important checks and balances – such as removing the need for a two-thirds majority to change the rules which govern how the NEC conducts business – but to also seek to increase the executive powers of sub-committees, whilst flooding the sub-committees with coalition members, giving them more powers than the National Executive Committee, is a fundamental and political attack on our union’s democracy.
Members will decide
The legal advice that was made available to the NEC has been issued with the branch briefing. This will allow members and activists to judge for themselves whether the actions of the President and those on the NEC were reasonable in the circumstances.
Left Unity urges everyone in PCS not to fall for the obfuscation, but to look at the facts. The coalition is attempting to gaslight NEC members and our membership into believing those protecting your best interests are the ones creating the issues.
There is no move here to block the NEC majority. This is a political manoeuvre by the coalition members to block the General Secretary and those Democracy Alliance NEC members who supported her at the 11th June meeting.
The new majority should have accepted the General Secretary’s offer to work together to agree the five amendments put forward by the President; had they done so and accepted they would not have the required two-thirds support for their further amendments to the Standing Orders, the NEC would have agreed a set of Standing Orders and moved on to discuss union matters on behalf of members, as has happened at NEC’s for the last two decades and more.
It was the coalition, not the General Secretary or the other NEC members that failed members on the 11th June.
The credibility and integrity of our union is at stake. Do not let subterfuge and false narrative cloud that reality.