I am honoured to stand as Left Unity candidate for DWP Group President. I have been a PCS representative for seventeen years, I am a member of the NEC and Chair of Wirral Branch. I have been a member of the DWP GEC for eight years, moving from ordinary member to Assistant Secretary, to Vice President. 

Winning improvements for PCS members is my vocation. I am a firm believer that policy should protect members and promote fairness, not cause detriment. The workplace should be a safe space where we can bring our whole selves to work.  It is this belief that ensures I have members’ needs at the forefront of every decision I make.   

As a woman of mixed heritage, born to a black father and white mother, I know discrimination, as I know misogyny and abuse, and I bring my life experiences to every role I undertake. Those that have heard my story understand my unceasing endeavor to support all women, to end race discrimination, sexual harassment and ableism in our workplaces and within society, to ensure members are able to observe their religion, and identify as their true selves, with the full support of their managers and colleagues alike. 

I was integral in the creation of policy such as the BAME Risk Assessment and Childcare & Carers Policy, considered ground-breaking by the TUC and held in the annals as examples of what unions can win. I worked to win period dignity at work, for free products in our offices and I continue to ensure that policy changes are equality proofed, having argued away the detrimental changes within the Career Break policy that would have denied opportunity to members that had a sickness warning, and using Equality Impact Assessment to prevent the late opening of Jobcentres in city centres at the height of the pandemic. I have worked with the national union to enable more cases to reach Employment Tribunal, and actively use my experience to advise on cases, winning real gains for members, more often than not before the case has reached court. I continue to build engagement with our members through well attended lunch-time equality events and to press for employment law training for reps to ensure members have the right support at the time of need.

I have the ability and acumen to both interpret policy and legislation, and build strategies that can win better for members. I fully supported the coherent national pay strategy promoting its benefits at members meetings, so was proud to see our Group clear the Tory imposed voting threshold in 2022, for the first time since the anti TU legislation was introduced. Despite the cries of the opposition factions, the strategy won us huge gains. More pay in our members’ pockets for the first time in decades, protected the CS Compensation Scheme, ensuring members forced into voluntary or compulsory redundancy will still receive full compensation, and no reduction in the levels of compensation for attendance dismissals, all of which was to be reduced by 33%, meaning in reality, tens of thousands of pounds protected, for you. The action taken also brought Cabinet Office to the table for pay coherence talks.

This is what a strong union can do, and I am proud to have been part of the leadership that had the foresight to implement this effective strategy, and of our membership that was ready to put your collective strength behind it.  As we pick up the pay campaign, it is vital that, as the biggest Group in the union, we continue to play our part, and that we bring our members with us to the forefront of the fight.  I give you my commitment that I will continue to work with you to increase our industrial strength and ready us for action, to let you see and understand the power that you hold, to ensure we clear that voting threshold again.

But I can do none of the above without your support in the elections.  I need you to support me, to support you.

We have a fantastic cadre of reps, many new to PCS, so to help grow confidence and ability and in readiness to step up to national action as soon as the call comes, activist training will be high on my agenda.

I am a socialist to my core, and a committed member of Left Unity. I have been around long enough to know that it is Left Unity that works for our members’ interests. We answer to no political party, but to you, our members, and if elected I will make it my mission to build cohesion within our union, to give us the best opportunity of strengthening our arm for the battles ahead.  

In these uncertain times we cannot trust politicians, PCS is a key player on the political stage, and our Group key to our union.  We must therefore stay one step ahead of the employer, and in front of government, always ready to read the room and to hear what is said within the pause; ready to act, and know how. If elected I will bring every ounce of my experience to the table, to charter the uncertain waters ahead, to keep you protected and endeavor to win for you bigger and better improvements in your pay and conditions. I will continue the call for a fully funded, social security service, keeping the pressure on with the staffing campaign, fight to protect jobs and offices and importantly, fight to protect the health and wellbeing of our members.

Please vote for me in the 2024 DWP Group election, and for all of the Left Unity candidates, so that we will have a team of reps ready to support you, and to support the national leadership on your behalf.