Growing up, both of my parents worked for the Department for Work and Pensions in my home city’s sole Jobcentre. I was always proud to say my parents were civil servants and I grew up with an inherent respect for government work, as they helped maintain the social safety net that is so crucial to our society.

After graduating, and struggling in the precarious pandemic-era economy of zero-hour contracts, I followed in the footsteps of my parents and got my first Civil Service job, at the Passport Office, in June 2022.

I was shocked by what I found.

The office had been without a PCS branch for upwards of 4 years, and had seen a corresponding deterioration in relations between staff and management. The nadir of this was a system of unrealistic targets, unique to my office, that made my colleagues and I feel bullied, micromanaged, and belittled. I had joined PCS in my first week and engaged national Passport Office PCS reps about the targets and other issues. We reestablished meetings between the office’s senior leadership and convinced them in our first meeting to end the targets that had been in place for 4 years.

After this, I worked to create a proper, functioning branch, capable of taking on the deeper cultural challenges in our workplace. As well as massively building our membership and local density, we have grown from 2 reps at the start, to 10 and a full committee now. I have organised the training and overseen the development of many of our reps, building a branch that has strength in depth and increasing knowledge, not only numbers.

While I worked on my branch, our trade union movement roared into life, as working people saw the living standards of themselves and their families assaulted by rampant and unchecked inflation. Union members made their power felt in voting for and conducting the greatest campaign of industrial action in my lifetime.

Going on strike is never easy, and is a last resort to many who only withdraw their labour when they feel no other option. As our members struggled with the mounting cost-of-living crisis, many could not afford any significant amount of unpaid strike days, but still needed a way to fight back. To this end, our Democracy Alliance NEC adopted the revolutionary strategy of the levy, where a temporary increase in subscription rates could fund fully paid extended strikes in pivotal work areas to create strike action with maximum impact and minimum costs to members.

I was so proud to play a role in our strategy, as the Passport Office delivered the largest single action of the campaign, where we took almost 2,000 staff for 4 weeks, and 4,000 out the week after. I played my part by organising and attending all 30 hours of picket lines at my office, giving interviews to local, national, and international media, answering hundreds of member queries, handling our branch strike pay and creating a guide on strike pay to be used in other branches, and addressing one of our union’s rallies outside Downing Street on a strike day.

I saw firsthand how the NEC’s strategy managed to both shield our members from unsustainable losses in pay from unfunded strikes, while applying the greatest sledgehammer of industrial pressure ever wielded in our union’s history. I believe that this strategy is key to our future successes and could even reset the balance of power between employers and employees, as we can support more members on sustained action in future, to further both national and local disputes. Our bold campaign made trade union history when we became the first ever civil service union to draw concessions on pay from the government. If fact, we did this not once, but twice, winning first a £1,500 lump sum payment for each member, and then more than doubling the previously planned 2% pay remit to 4.5-5%. However, we all know that this is not enough, and we must keep going for the good of all of our members. I fully support us continuing our campaigns on these dear issues, using the strategies developed in the last two years.

After the growth in my branch and our role in the strikes, I was humbled to win the New Activist award at our 2023 Conference. I have since then served on the Home Office Group Executive Committee, and have been so proud to as our union defends the rights of our members in frustrating the Rwanda policy and resisting the imposition of Minimum Service Levels on our Border Force colleagues. I am currently writing a report to kickstart our group campaign towards securing trials of a fully paid four-day working week in our department.

Having seen the change in my office between us not having a union branch to having an active one, and having seen the power we could apply and concessions we could win during our national campaign, I am a greater believer in unions than ever, because I have seen them work. We must continue our campaigns on pay, pensions, to defend our conditions, and must retain the hard-campaigning nature that makes our union stand out.

Vote to keep our union in safe hands.

Vote to keep our culture of a campaigning union, continuing the legacy of Mark Serwotka.

Vote to support Fran Heathcote, our newly elected General Secretary and the first woman to hold the position in our union’s history.

Vote for unity, not division.

Vote to re-elect your Democracy Alliance National Executive.