HM Courts and Tribunals Service – PCS consultative ballot over Covid safety
Ministry of Justice staff are not notorious for wanting to go on strike at the drop of a hat. But current conditions in HM Courts and Tribunals Service are so bad that there is a demand from PCS union members for an adequate response to the dangers they face. Following the impressive engagement of teachers and school-workers that the National Education Union recently achieved (leading to a significant government climb-down and U-turn), it will be interesting to see if section 44 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 also gets invoked on a mass scale in HMCTS.
Some areas of the MoJ have been well set up and workers have been using laptop computers and mobile phones to work flexibly (including from home) for years. Courts and Tribunals have been less fortunate: 70% of HMCTS staff have been required to continue going into workplaces since March 2020.
Continue readingCelebrating LGBT+ History Month
We celebrate this February and every February to inform and educate around a simple truth : LGBT+ people exist, have always existed and will forever exist. This month is used to profile figures from history that are not always known to the general population as being from our community. It has had good success in raising the profile of Alan Turing, for example, revealing narratives of oppression that can shock and dismay a naive heteronormative mind. We aim to gather recognition and understanding from the majority society. And to embrace our history and our present with pride – not to be merely tolerated, to have full equality and respect.
The simple act of identification as LGBT+ can inspire a sense of solidarity, an idea of shared culture and worth. An invaluable act when far too often, LGBT+ community history has been steeped in ridicule and discrimination. As socialists we should always align with the power of hidden stories and the strength of social history.
Continue readingWhy I can’t watch “It’s a Sin”
Russel T. Davies is an amazing writer. The characters he creates and the sense of time and place he evokes are so spot on. You can tell he is really writing about things that he understands. Just listening to friends rave about “It’s a Sin” and seeing their Facebook comments about how brilliant it is; how it made them laugh and cry and how the soundtrack takes them back, has convinced me that I can’t watch it. The reason I am unable to steel myself to watch it is because I just don’t feel capable of watching something so real about being LGBT in the 1980s. Television drama may be shocking enough, but the reality was much worse.
Fair enough it wasn’t all bad. I certainly made friends with people who remain friends to this day. In fact, I think it may even be true to say that I met a range of characters who I probably wouldn’t have met in today’s more inclusive society. Apart from Gay Bars there were little out of the way (usually seedy) pubs where you could often find LGBT folks, an array of sex workers, a few armed robbers and people from all over the globe having a whale of a time. But the only thing that united us really, was our otherness, being different was our common denominator.
Continue readingPlease support Left Unity DWP GEC candidates
Please nominate Left Unity candidates for the DWP group elections
Left Unity is a socialist organisation within PCS that has provided the leadership of the DWP group for two decades and has been at the forefront of the union’s response to the Covid pandemic.
WE HAVE KEPT MEMBERS SAFE AND BUILT THE UNION
Throughout the past year the Left Unity led GEC have fought to protect and keep members safe from Covid-19 by pressing for staff to work from home and by insisting on strong risk assessments to keep our offices safe. DWP management have been the worst in the civil service at providing the kit for staff to work from home but by successfully campaigning the GEC led and won a consultative ballot in our Jobcentres and UC service centres with 78% of members voting for action.
Continue readingVote for the Democracy Alliance
This leaflet is produced by PCS Left Unity and the PCS Democrats. Working together as the Democracy Alliance. We have, for the past 17 years, built a campaigning, democratic union that has fought hard to defend member’s interests in the face of relentless attacks.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been the key issue of 2020 and has brought about challenges that have forced us to radically review, and change, everything we do. Members and their families have faced huge issues and our reps and activists have been fantastic. Situations like these require strong leadership and the Democracy Alliance-led NEC has provided that leadership.
We are asking you to continue to support the Democracy Alliance National Executive Committee (NEC) slate for 2021 by nominating our candidates at your Branch Annual General Meeting.
Continue readingStunning vote for action at Heathrow Airport
PCS members in the Home Office group working at Heathrow Airport have delivered a stunning vote in favour of strike action.
In a ballot closing on 29 January members voted by 96% to take strike action and 98% for action short of strike on a turnout of 68%.
This means that the results beat the 50% turnout threshold, but also crucially, the additional requirement of 40% total of those covered by the dispute voting in favour of action. This additional restrictive measure being imposed by the Tory anti-Trade Union Act on the basis that border security is deemed an “important public service”.
The dispute originates in Border Force management’s decision to impose a fixed shift roster at the airport, replacing the more flexible arrangements preceding it. The local Heathrow and West London Branch clearly set out reasons why the new rostering was unacceptable including how reduced flexibility would affect carers, work-life balance, disabled members and that these would be further exacerbated by compulsory midnight shift starts.
Continue readingOrganising to keep members safe in the Courts and CPS
The PCS – Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Group has joined the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Group – for HM Courts and Tribunal Service in calling for the temporary closure of courts during lockdown.
If courts aren’t to close, the CPS Group has called for the withdrawal of all prosecutors, paralegals, court managers and administrators from physical deployment – deferring to virtual hearings as default. The respective Departmental management’s failure to meet these demands has led to the Union in both Groups moving to official industrial disputes.
The Lord Chief Justice’s recent announcement that all hearings should be held virtually over the Cloud Video Platform or CVP by default is with the exception of contested trials, where physical attendance of all parties and agencies is still expected. We have said that while we accept it’s more difficult to hold a trial virtually, it is possible and was in fact trialled in 2019 with some degree of success. We accept that the virtual attendance of witnesses may be problematic in terms of security, but PCS believes we can negotiate an agreed solution to this issue.
Continue readingBuild on the Pay Day lunchtime rally success
Over 600 members attended 10 lunch time rallies across PCS regions and nations, held on Friday 29th of January. The rallies were held as part of our National Pay Campaign #FairPayDay responding to the public sector pay freeze which comes after over 10 years of austerity and pay freezes and caps.
Speakers at each rally included local MPs Chris Stephens, Chair of the PCS Parliamentary Group, Honorary Chair, John McDonnell , Zarah Sultana, Rachel Hopkins, Kate Osborne, Paula Barker, Richard Burgon, Beth Winter, Tonia Antoniazzi, Stephen Farry, Claire Hanna , Kerry McCarthy alongside the General Secretary, Assistant General Secretary and National President and Vice Presidents.
Never again….. The dark shadow of the Holocaust
Holocaust Memorial Day article
Four IOPCC PCS union members made an extraordinary educational trip to Krakow and Auschwitz in October 2019 and we wanted to mark International Holocaust Memorial Day with our thoughts on the trip. We joined members from Unite, Unison, FBU, NEU and UCU who brought groups of their students on the trip. There were also anti-fascist activists whose family members had died at Auschwitz or survived to be sent to slave camps. It was a chance for all of us to really live the organisations’ ideals of making a difference and being inclusive, by learning about a dark point in history and sharing our experiences with others.
An introductory solidarity message from Jeremy Corbyn about the importance of opposing the rise of the far-right across Europe today was followed by historian David Rosenberg talking about Polish Jewish life and resistance in the 1930s. He drove home a strong sense of the diverse culture, politics and languages of Jewish people in Poland before World War Two.
The next day was spent on a walking tour from the old Jewish cemetery (now restored after its desecration by the Nazis) to Kazimierz, the heart of the old Jewish quarter. We saw the Old Synagogue, market squares and the alleys where Steven Spielberg filmed Schindler’s List. Whilst we learned about the widespread anti-Semitism we also heard about the courage of Polish Catholics who tried to help their Jewish friends and neighbours, adopting children, giving food and cigarettes or hair dye to help people escape. Our tour ended in the Ghetto from where so many were deported to extermination or slave camps. It was a truly sobering experience.
Teacher and long standing UAF activist Anna Gluckstein gave a talk on why the Holocaust happened and we discussed what we had seen and how the Nazis created a terror state.
We spent Saturday in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camps. Our excellent Polish tour guides explained the brutality and murders there in heart-breaking detail. We saw the gas chambers and crematoria, where the Nazis tried to hide their crimes. Buildings hold murdered people’s possessions piled high to the ceiling. It is difficult to describe the impact of such a place especially when experienced with those who have such a personal connection to the terrible events that occurred there. We were able to join a reflection session after this shocking and gruelling experience, which helped many of us process what we had seen.
From a Polish anti-fascist we learnt how serious the situation currently is in Poland, where the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party is influenced by the far-right and some mayors have declared their towns to be ‘LGBT free’ zones. There was also inspiring news about ordinary people building anti-racist and pro-LGBT events, including a march against racism and fascism on 11 November 2019.
Our final talk was by Lorna Brunstein. She told us about growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust as her grandmother Sarah and her mother Esther were both at Auschwitz. Sarah was murdered at the camp. Esther survived, was sent to Belson camp and later became an anti-fascist campaigner in Britain. It would have been impossible not to be inspired by the lives of these three courageous and impactful women.
The trip left us angry and grieving for all that we lost to Nazi brutality but inspired by resistance and moral courage in terrible circumstances. We were strengthened with ideas to build the anti-fascist movement in our workplaces and want to help ensure the catastrophe of the Holocaust never happens again.
The trip in 2020 had to be cancelled because of the pandemic. But we were still able to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2021 at work today with an online meeting with David Rosenberg who talked about the role of trade unionists in opposing racism and fascism in World War Two and today.
By Nathifa Brewster, Sarah Ensor, Patricia Furphy and Lauren White.
PCS Left Unity 