My name is Adrian Hedley and I am asking for your vote in the upcoming PCS National Executive Committee elections.

I have been a member of PCS for 15 years, first joining when I started employment in back in 2007. I became active in the union almost straight away as a workplace rep and have since held several roles during my time in PCS. In addition to being a current member of the National Executive Committee, I am Chair of my Branch, a Group Assistant Secretary, Northern Region Vice-Chair and President of the Private Sector Members Association.

Despite an incredibly difficult and unique first year, as we continue to support members through the pandemic, I feel that I have been able to make a valuable contribution in my work as an NEC member and to the various sub-committees that I have been elected to.

My work on the NEC is adding to the substantial experience that I have working for members in my own group as part of the Union’s Private Sector, including playing part of delivering a national agreement that Atos will pay the real Living Wage, uplifting some members’ salaries by thousands of pounds in the process, and more a subsequent agreement to raise the minimum CBU salary to £20,000, benefiting hundreds of members in the process.

Our members are facing a cost of living crisis. Rising food and energy bills, increasing fuel costs, tax increases and the soaring cost of living, on top of existing pay restraint and overpayment in pensions contributions. It is therefore vital that our immediate priority is the 2022 is the national consultative ballot of public sector members.

We must also carry this campaigning in our work in the Private Sector of PCS, as many of our members in the sector are employed on Government or Public Sector contracts. In addition to the constant threat of TUPE, attacks on pay and conditions and the threat of further outsourcing or off-shoring, our members feel the same devastation that cuts and austerity continues cause to public services.

Being one of the smaller, yet most diverse populations within PCS, it is vital that the Private Sector continues to be represented at a national level and on the NEC. We continue to fight, on a daily basis, for what should be the most basic of employment rights – Trade Union recognition and the right to collective bargaining.

We need to continue the hard work in showing our members in the Private Sector that they are represented at a national level and on the NEC, and if re-elected, I will continue to do just that.

Full Democracy Alliance nomination list