Fran Heathcote, Left Unity PCS President, looks at the issues facing PCS reps and activists in the period ahead.

By now, most PCS activists will have attended a ‘Future of PCS’ briefing. They have been held in every group, region, nation and equality forum at the start of a process to engage everyone at the earliest stage in what will be an ongoing discussion, in order to get as much input as possible.

This is taking place at a time when PCS has been involved in a number of campaigns and disputes which the Left Unity-led NEC are fully supporting, and asking Left Unity members to show their support too.

Whether it’s the ISS Cleaners in HMRC striking for fair pay, the Tate workers in the Culture Sector striking against redundancy, the Southbank workers balloting over redundancies, the consultative ballot that was held in DWP over safety in 21 Universal Credit service centres and associated jobcentres, or Driving Examiners in DFT group being consulted over safety concerns, it is clear that there is a lot going on right now within PCS.

Alongside all of this, we are in a continuous round of meetings with Cabinet Office and ministers around all things COVID-19 related, including our ongoing efforts to keep our members safe, and stopping them being forced back into the workplace before it is safe to do so, our default position being safety first.

The pay petition still needs more signatures. We hit 50,000 relatively quickly and it now needs a push to get over the 100,000 mark to generate a debate in parliament, not because anyone claims that a petition alone will smash the government’s pay policy, but because it allows us to engage members around the complex picture of delegated pay across the civil service, taking account of developments in departments like HMRC as those talks progress.

On pensions, the government are seeking to re-evaluate the scheme in order to make our members pay for their illegality. There is a public consultation running until 11th October which PCS has publicised on the PCS website and we are pursuing a legal challenge, alongside a number of other unions, including the FBU.

During the crisis many things have been done differently, in terms of digital technology, virtual meetings have become the norm, which included the NEC meeting fortnightly initially and now meeting monthly. Our regular cycle of conference and elections have not taken place and there have been virtually no T&S costs throughout this period.

PCS, like the Civil Service, is having to learn lessons from the crisis and consider how we might do things differently in future.

Over the last few months, the NEC has been discussing the future of PCS and our ability to campaign based on our organising principles of Building, Growing and Winning.

There have been two national briefings issued BB/37/20 and BB/42/20 and LU members are encouraged to familiarise themselves, in particular, with BB/42/20 which includes a lot of background information, including a timeline of events that have affected PCS, going right back to 2004 when Gordon Brown announced his 100,000 civil service jobcuts, and the impact on PCS throughout this whole period to date.

ADC 2018, following the 3 year strategic review, agreed a number of objectives and targets, following the brilliant work of reps and activists during the removal of check-off to secure the future of PCS against what was an existential threat.

We have been successful in achieving many of these targets but it is now clear that we are not going to hit our key objective, which was to grow PCS to 200,000 members by the end of 2020.

In fact, when we began this work, membership stood at 181,764, now it is nearly 3,000 less, so although we are seeing some really good organising initiatives, in terms of recruitment, increased digital use and during the crisis in particular, a large increase in reps, advocates and members, and an increase in participation, the fact is that PCS membership is not increasing at anything like the required rate, despite the civil service growing.

We have seen some parts of PCS beat their recruitment targets set within our strategy, areas such as Home Office and Scottish Government have grown and continue to grow, but in other parts of PCS, including our two biggest groups, membership has fallen.

Recently that has changed and in DWP and HMRC, we are seeing more joiners than leavers and a net increase in membership which is to be welcomed. Of course, this is not all traditional civil service recruitment either. Many new entrants are coming in on agency or fixed-term contracts, with the challenges around recognition that brings.

We need to turn civil service recruitment into PCS recruitment and look at each group and area in detail.

The union need to fully understand the scale of the recruitment challenge and have tasked the National Organising Committee to provide detailed analysis to the NEC on 30/09 which will then be shared widely.

It is against this backdrop that the NEC agreed that just maintaining the status quo is not an option. PCS could of course, sit back and hope that our organising strategies continue to bare fruit, and in our two biggest departments there is some evidence of that, but the Left Unity-led leadership concluded that if we don’t embrace the need for change now, and just wait, in a few years things will have got worse.

We need the ability to take on the employer, in both the public and the private sector, with the resources to campaign and organise effectively.

The NEC agreed that any discussions must be fully informed, with the full engagement of reps and activists, and discussions should be transparent, which is why groups, regions, nations and equality fora have all just been invited to hold meetings with either myself or the general secretary as the speaker, not at the end of the discussion, but at the very start of the process.

We are all proud of PCS, of what we’ve built together, in terms of our campaigns and our democracy, and so we feel strongly that we need it not only to survive, but to be available and fit for purpose in the future. If we want to be ahead of the game, we need to start developing a strategy in advance and prepare for the battles ahead.

The Left Unity NEC is very clear that the union is not on the financial brink, or in some form of crisis, having worked very hard to stabilise PCS throughout what has been a period of massive challenges. Reps and activists have done some great work together.

We are getting through and we are stabilising, but we are not yet where we need to be.

Our fighting fund now stands at over £1.7million, built up using a combination of a proportion of the money won from DWP, when we took them to court and won, over their removal of check-off, and the donations that many members now make to build up a ‘war chest’ to support groups of members taking strike action.

Throughout the pandemic, there has been an influx of new members saying that they want to be more involved in their union, and have put themselves forward to play a more active role.

All of this is to be welcomed but let’s be clear, we are going to need every single one of them, given the scale of the attacks we are facing in the period ahead. The detailed membership and recruitment analysis is going to be vital in understanding where we are recruiting, where we aren’t and why that is.

Although we now yield a rental income of over £1 million per annum by renting out parts of PCS HQ, it is a fact that if membership drops, then so does our available income.

It is very clear that a large factor in the financial quandary we face is because less membership subscriptions, coupled with a deficit in the PCS staff pension scheme, mean less available resource available for campaigning. This year, as staff have left the organisation, they have been replaced from within it.

Despite there being 20% less staff now, the truth is that although we have an effective recovery plan in place to address the staff pension deficit, it is a 10 year plan, meaning that staffing costs are unlikely to reduce significantly any time soon. At it’s peak, membership in PCS stood at 327,000 members in 2004, now it stands at approximately 178,000, and so it is inevitable that we will need to take steps to put in place a staffing structure commensurate with our size.

PCS values the fantastic staff we have, and the NEC are determined to ensure that they are protected by the no compulsory redundancy/ no compulsory transfer guarantee and that we maintain good relations with the staff union, the GMB, and everything is taken forward in full consultation with them.

We are currently spending too much on internal structures, staffing and administration costs, and these costs, as a proportion of income are getting greater.

Five years ago staffing costs were approximately 58% of income, now these costs are 62% of income. The aim is to generate at least 50% of income towards campaigning (more would be welcome obviously), and we are some way off that, this is an issue that we need to address.

So the quandary that faces all of us who care about the future of PCS is this – How do we campaign effectively and support our reps, if we don’t have the same level of funds to direct towards that? This isn’t a question for the NEC alone, but for all of us working together to shape the future of PCS. Left Unity needs to be at the forefront of that discussion.

That does not mean that we are giving up on building PCS, and as stated previously, we are seeing some really encouraging signs of the strategies we have put in place taking effect, but the truth is, if we don’t recruit massively, in the face of a hostile government, a future recession and job cuts, together with all of the attacks that we face, we won’t be able to mount effective campaigns to defend ourselves.

The NEC has agreed to look at two ‘visions’, both about radical change, but for a healthier PCS allowing us to build, grow and win. Both set against some guiding principles:

• Any decision to change must be lay-led, open, democratic and put members at the centre of any change. Everything needs to be transparent, democratic and any decisions will be made by Annual Delegate Conference, or a special conference held for this specific purpose.

• We must keep Equality at the heart of everything we do.

• Honour our commitments to staff, guaranteeing no compulsory transfers, no compulsory relocations and all done in full consultation with GMB.

We want to consider two options:-

– A complete restructuring of the union, with less employment costs, less servicing costs and more resource into frontline organising and campaigning. Develop further the use of digital technology, recognising that things cannot just remain as they always have done and focusing on whether the structures we put in place when PCS was formed, are still the best ones.

Looking at every level of PCS; What do branches do? What do groups do? What do our staff do? And how does PCS function?

Recognising that we are not asking anyone to work harder, but many may be asked to work differently.

– A possible merger, engaging everyone in the discussion at the earliest stage and based on our set of key principles, which are that any merger being considered should:

• Increase industrial strength and bargaining power

• Maintain or enhance lay-led democracy through membership participation

• maintain the role of conference and our commitment that it continues to be our policy-makling body, to which all branches are entitled to elect delegates.

• Strengthen workplace organisation

• Secure the union’s finances and maximise resources for building the union and fighting to win

• Increase diversity of representation on the union’s structures and enhance our ability to organise on equality issues.

It may be that we end up with an amalgamation of the two options.

The clear view of the Left Unity majority on the NEC was that at this stage we should rule nothing in, and rule nothing out. We should gather the information from the membership analysis, the Financial analysis and from the scoping documents and then following an initial discussion of the NEC on 30/09, we should immediately conduct another round of meetings with regions, nations, groups and equality fora, to continue the consultation.

The timescale we are setting will allow for the maximum further discussion, and any proposals to ADC 2021 are likely to be ‘broadbrush, direction of travel’ motions, as opposed to motions for radical change.

During the initial round of discussions, one rep questioned why these meetings were taking place, as they weren’t being asked to decide anything yet, but that is the whole point of the process, recognising that change is necessary but making it a shared discussion and not one decided on behind closed doors. We want to involve as many reps and activists as possible in developing our strategy.

Rather than engage constructively in this debate, Left Unity’s embittered political opponents in the Socialist Party front, Broad Left Network (BLN), seek to spread division and instablity for electoral and factional advantage. Cynically distorting the union’s position as a rushed approach, with changes to be forced on reps, when they know quite well the exact opposite is true.

The timescale allows for extensive discussion and debate at every stage, so that anything that is debated will come as no surprise to anyone, because it will have been discussed and talked through far in advance, before any proposals for change are made.

Left Unity are clear that this open and transparent approach is what our activists and members would expect of us. BLN’s incredible falsehood that the union’s assessment of staffing costs is a myth, shows an appalling level of recklessness, ignorance and a failure to grasp the challenge posed by the staff pension deficit.

Once viewed with respect in PCS, the Socialist Party is now increasingly detached from reality, putting forward a series of bizarre assertions and arguing for positions that gain little or no traction with NEC members, activists or their shrinking group of supporters. Their destructive actions in PCS are now evident in other unions too; rather than seeking to build unity on the left, they pursue their own selfish agenda to try and win influence, regardless of the interests of members and activists alike.

BLN NEC members need to engage with members in their own branches and workplaces, by attending their BECs and understanding the issues that members face.

These are not theoretical, university-style debates, they are the very real concerns of our members, and at stake are their jobs and livelihoods; It is members, and their reps, that must be listened to first and foremost.

The Left Unity majority on the NEC are determined to keep our members and supporters informed of the facts, and involved in the discussion, and urge everyone to play an active part in the consultation taking place at every stage, to ensure that all options and views are heard, and that the decisions we take in the future fully reflect the needs of our members and activists.

Please feed in your views and make sure that together we agree a strategy for a stronger, campaign-focused PCS, that can continue to deliver for its members in the future.

DWP putting safety at increased risk, Pull out all the stops to win the ballot

If ever there was a ballot we must win, this is it. Let’s be clear – this dispute is about safety. There have been grim predictions from prominent scientists about the prospect of a second wave of Covid-19 in the winter. In these circumstances, it would be very dangerous to extend operating hours in 270 Jobcentres and 21 Universal Credit ServiceCentres from November 30th. Yet – this is exactly what the DWP intends to do.

This is a political decision. We have to send a message back that we won’t let the Government, and DWP, play around with our lives.

This issue affects every Jobcentre member, including those who have opted out of the Employee Deal, and even those who don’t currently work in one of the offices where the employer intends to extend operating hours from 30th November, and every member based in one of the 21 Service Centre sites where the employer wants to extend operating hours.

If you work in a Jobcentre which isn’t immediately affected by the current DWP plans, please be aware – DWP have informed PCS that all Jobcentres, subject to viability, will extend their operating hours at some point in the future.

If you’ve opted out of the Employee Deal, don’t be under any illusion that this issue doesn’t affect you as well. If you are working in an office where the hours get extended, the safety risks increase for everyone in that office, even those who are not working during the extended hours.

Even if it were safe to extend the hours, there is no rational reason to do it. We’ve previously been told the DWP might want to extend operating hours because many people who claim Universal Credit also work, and might not be able to access Jobcentre services during Monday-Friday 9-5, and some other people might prefer to visit Jobcentres on a Saturday due to needing a quieter environment. Neither of these scenarios are issues now, any more than they were issues before the onset of the pandemic.

Management’s latest argument is that there is likely to be another spike in unemployment over the next few months. They claim this means they need to expand operating hours. But that just makes no sense at all. Jobcentre staff have already copedwith 2.5 million extra Universal Credit claims earlier during the pandemic, by changing their working practices. There was no need for extended hours then, and there is no need for them now.

Political pressure

The government’s drive to reopen the economy, no matter the increased risk to safety it causes, is being mimicked by DWP right now.

Left Unity are aware of DWP’s plans to bring more customers in to our Jobcentres in thecoming weeks, we know they intend to reopen medical assessment centres bringing thesick and vulnerable in for assessment, and intend to ramp up of the conditionality and sanctions regime. At a time when infection rates are on the rise and a second spike of Covid is likely, and when the economic crisis will leave millions out of work and companies cutting back or closing altogether, to increase face-to-face activity in our offices and put pressure those on benefits by reinstating the previous hardline benefit regime is disgrace. They are placing the lives of our members and the most vulnerable in society at risk.

It is imperative that we get a good turnout in this consultative safety ballot. Feedback from members is positive. First demanding to know when they were going to receive their ballot papers, and many since eager to tell us they have voted, we are confident we can achieve a high turnout. This will enable the LU led GEC to go back to DWP, tell them our members don’t accept it is safe to extend operating hours from 30th November,or extend services in Jobcentres, and demand once again that they withdraw their plans.

If, at that stage, they still insist on going ahead, we will seriously need to consider holding a Statutory Ballot, which would be a strike ballot. If we wanted to take action as a result of that, not only would we need to have the majority in favour, we would also, due to the Tory anti-trade union laws, have to get at least 50% of members voting in that ballot. We need to be in a position where we’re confident we can achieve that.

For the next ten days Left Unity urge reps and members to pull out all of the stops to deliver a huge turnout and drive out the vote in the consultative ballot. Branches need tocontinue issuing regular updates and reminders to members, urge them to speak to others about the importance of voting, involve PCS Advocates in this process, and find ways to keep checking whether members have submitted their votes.

The relaunched Branch app is a great tool in helping us to do this, and every branch should use it. Meetings of members need to take place urgently if they haven’t already. Some branches have already held successful Zoom meetings, uniting those working in the office with those working at home.

This ballot has to be an absolute priority for all of us. Let’s make sure we win it.

VOTE YES IN THE BALLOT – VOTE YES FOR SAFETY

This is the text of a speech by Annette Rochester, PCS NEC member, to a Midlands Regional meeting on Zoom in early June.

Today I’m tired. sleepless. Angry. Over 50 years ago Malcolm X said – That is not a chip on my shoulder – that’s your foot on my neck. How prophetic those words were.

Today – Public Health England published a report that I haven’t yet read – delayed by what is going on in America which proves that the government is aware of the social disparity it reveals. they know they need to take the moat out of its own eye and that what is happening in America isn’t because they are unique and could easily happen here.

Already we are seeing uprisings in places like New Zealand and Australia where in just one year – 1991 – 99 Aborigines were killed in custody. In the 28 years since then a further 432 have died. In Britain since records began not one officer has been tried and convicted of murder or manslaughter when people have died in their custody although in that same period 1741 people lost their lives and Black & Asian people are more than two times more likely to die.

Across the West Midlands in the last 3 months there are 6 cases alleging police brutality- 4 involving the same officer.

And of course there is the over-representation of Aborigines, African Americans and Black British people in prison. There is a multitude of reasons for this but anyone who badges this as simply class war needs to understand that we cannot fight a class war whilst we are under siege and fighting for our very survival – our right to breathe.

Every black British mother must tell her son how to walk – how to react to a police stop and search. I’ve told my son and now I’m telling my grandsons. I remember going to a PCS BM conference which was addressed by the then chair of the Black police federation – a detective inspector who told us of the time he was stopped and searched with the old chestnut – you answer the description of a burglar – in his 3-piece suit!

At the same time society refuses to acknowledge the mental strain this puts you under so we often get tagged with the aggressive trope!

It’s not our bodies or minds that are weak but the systems that are supposed to support us. In fact, those systems are often weaponised against us and the recently released Public Health England report highlights it is racism that is the main cause of increased deaths in the communities.

I’m fortunate enough to have lived long enough to have been here before. And unfortunately have seen the same problems that impacted me, impact my son and impacting my 15-year-old grandson who was stopped and search after playing basketball with the same tired old excuse. Why is he not allowed to be a child?

Society is governed by contract – We are policed by agreement. Black and Asians Britons – just when are we going to be allowed to be called Britons? – are expected to sign up to this as part of society but are being short-changed. We cannot put people on the outside of society and expect them to live by its rules.

At work including the civil service we are over monitored and under praised. Our lived experiences doubted and diminished, our opportunities stifled. And rather than seeing fewer race cases they are on the increase.

Some of this is down to lack of empathy and of course downright racism as evidenced in the NHS where it is reported black and Asian medics are pushed to the frontline riskier roles because they are not valued in the same way.

The civil service is promoting the progression of BAME staff – social mobility being one of its top priorities. But all organisations should remember tokenism is not representation – I should not have to say what you want me to say – I want to able to give my truths and for us to work properly together. When all voices are heard we create a rounded sound – a choir.

I would love to see more black activists working with me in the union and in wider society – helping to create a wall of sound and that’s why growing the BM network is one of our priorities. The DWP group has already started on this kicking off with two learning events for all BAME staff in London and West Midlands before lockdown. And we intend to continue this work across the country.

Covid and videos of a state sanctioned murder has opened people’s eyes to the very real injustices and inequality in society. Please keep them open.

You will have heard Lewis Hamilton state he was a lone voice – it’ s horrible being the lone voice – then Charles LeClerc responded saying he wanted to speak out but does not know how to. Then spoke.

I- we – loved that! Please don’t be scared to speak out: White silence is violence. Help us the take that foot off and create not a tolerant society but one in which we can all thrive.

My PCS branch in a non governmental public body and has worked hard over the last ten weeks to ensure our workplaces and staff are safe in this crisis. We felt our senior management was slow to react to the growing crisis and was still waiting on 16 March for government advice. We called an emergency branch committee meeting that day and drew up a list of what we needed from our employer as workers, parents and carers. This included full pay for anyone who wouldn’t be able to work their hours due to childcare and other caring. We included our cleaning colleagues who are outsourced and our agency staff and we recruited some more of them to the union. We immediately wrote to management with our list of needs including that all cleaning or agency colleagues who cannot work during this crisis are paid in full. We said we wanted our offices deep cleaned by properly trained and protected cleaners.

In that first week we called an online members meeting and managed to get over 210 members involved at short notice. The branch committee talked to loads of members by email and phone calls. We called directors again and again and firmly insisted on our requirements for the health and safety of our colleagues whether they are in the union or not. By Friday we had got almost everyone sent to work from home, including staff who had not previously been given tech to work from home. We got assurances that noone with caring responsibilities or health issues would have to be on-call, go to external meetings or anywhere they didn’t feel safe.

In the following two weeks we won ‘care plans’ with time off on full pay for parents and carers who cannot work their full hours. We pushed for the same emergency leave for anyone whose mental health suffers in this crisis but the take up of this has been patchy and anxiety levels are very high. Our senior management talks up our mental health support systems in usual times but staff still report bullying and a lack of support for their mental health and that situation hasn’t been completely solved. The anxiety also affects managers and we have had to try to diffuse situations exacerbated by the lockdown and fear of the virus.

Our online meeting system struggles with more than 200 participants so we repeated our weekly members’ meeting in the morning and afternoon of the same day. Some 300-350 members have joined these meetings weekly and of course there have been arguments and political disagreements but they have kept the committee and members focused and engaged. There are worries about the coming economic crisis and the cuts we may face but we have discussed and agreed we must resist being made to pay for this crisis.

Members’ voted recently to move to fortnightly meetings and we stuck to the plan despite Johnson’s chaos inducing message to stay alert, because our Director General sent a message that our organisation remains in lockdown and working from home. The branch committee continues to meet weekly.

Currently all our offices are closed and two or three individuals go into one office once a week to deal with post. This is on a voluntary basis and anyone else has to get written permission from a director to go into an office. We have been invited onto the working group for the eventual reopening of our offices but it’s moving slowly and it is clear we will be working from home for the foreseeable future.

Many members have been extremely worried at the prospect of sending their children back into schools on 1 June. So we invited Peter Middleman, National Education Union (NEU), NW regional Secretary to our online members’ meeting last week. Over 80 members heard Peter explain the NEU’s campaign to restrict schools to the most vulnerable children and children of key workers until it’s safe to open them further. He answered lots of questions and members said they felt reassured that their instincts to keep their children home was the right thing to do. We shared the NEU petition and template letter for members to write to their MP’s, councillors and head teachers before 28 May when the government is to make another announcement on schools. We encouraged members to join a Covid19 action group, People before Profit meeting this tuesday 26 May for teachers, parents and concerned members of the public. Our branch is clear that we will support any parent who keeps their children home and needs their ‘care plan’ to continue. Our management subsequently announced that care plans will continue for the foreseeable future.

There is still a lot to do. We have to ensure that our offices don’t reopen until our health and safety is assured with proper risk assessments and social distancing . But our buildings are relatively small so most of us will have to work from home for months ahead with all the problems that can cause. We have asked for written assurances that every staff member will be equally safe because we know that black and ethnic minority people have been disproportionately affected by Covid19. So we need to know what measures are going to be in place to ensure that none of our colleagues is at risk. We also want our cleaning colleagues and agency staff directly employed by our employer on the same terms and conditions as the rest of us and we need to work out how we are going to achieve this.

What we have achieved has not been easy, particularly when our HR dept rewrote all sorts of policies and assumed they could be “approved” without proper consultation in the middle of this crisis. But because the members have been so active we have been able to get proper consultation back on track.

Our union branch is stronger, better organised and larger than it was at the beginning of this crisis. So if anything good can come out of this horrible virus it will be that our PCS members have shown an extraordinary tenacity and determination to support each other through the worst time in our working lives that most of us have ever faced.