PCS

Public & Commercial Services Union - trade union for civil servants

PCS: undermining a fightback

The Left Unity leadership (LU) of the PCS civil service union is conducting a “survey”, over just two weeks, to gauge membership support for its 2024-25 pay demands and for strike action. LU failed to consult branches about the demands, sprang the survey on them without providing campaign materials, and has not given them time to campaign effectively for members’ support. The survey was issued to members on 20 February on a non “https” secure server. Some members expressed security concern for the handling of their data and this has meant they have not completed the survey. Some members have...

Civil service pay down 15 to 38%

Academic research commissioned by the civil service union PCS has concluded: “... UK Civil Service wages have dramatically eroded in real terms due to persistent below-inflation pay rises. Depending on the inflation indicator used, at best, real wages in 2023 were at where they were two decades ago... Since 2010, median annual pay has fallen between 15 and 38% in the civil service, depending on the grade and inflation indicator.” The Tories have no intention of seriously addressing either this deliberate reduction in real pay or the endemic low pay in the civil service and may be preparing to...

Joint slate agreed in PCS

The Independent Left group in the civil service union PCS, which includes supporters of Workers’ Liberty, has reached electoral agreement with Broad Left Network to challenge the ruling Left Unity ( LU ) group in the 2024 PCS National Executive (NEC) elections, for which nominations have already started and voting is in the spring. The agreed NEC slate , which includes independents and members of other groups, is predicated on a development of the principled programme that underpinned the IL/BLN joint ticket in last year’s Assistant General Secretary and General Secretary elections, which...

PCS impasse on pay

Members of the PCS civil service union appear to be heading for another tough pay year. National talks with the Cabinet Office (CO) are going nowhere fast following the PCS leadership’s June derailment of our 2022-23 national pay campaign. On the 10 January the Government published its “Civil Service People Plan 2024-2027”. Despite the national pay talks the People Plan does not address: • The fifteen year historic decline in the value of civil service pay, even though it acknowledges that “Civil Service average pay within grades has shown a general downward trend in real terms since 2008, due...

Unity can break LU control

The results of the General Secretary (GS) and Assistant General Secretary (AGS) elections in the civil service union PCS which closed on 14 December revealed a significant desire amongst members for change in the national leadership. Fran Heathcote, existing national president and member of the dominant Left Unity group, secured GS victory with only 783 votes more than Broad Left Network’s Marion Lloyd, and the Independent Left’s John Moloney secured a decisive AGS win over LU’s Paul O’Connor, obtaining just shy of 59% of the vote. The vote for the IL/BLN joint ticket was 21,262 to LU’s 18,492...

PCS vote closes on 14 December

The elections for General Secretary (GS) and Assistant General Secretary (AGS) of the PCS civil service union end on 14 December During the ballot period it has become increasingly clear that there are two different visions of trade unionism on offer. Left Unity (LU), the dominant grouping in PCS, is offering a top down, TUC-mainstream-style, union with a smattering of left sounding verbiage but now without the presence and political direction, such as it is, of outgoing GS Mark Serwotka. Without Serwotka, around whom a mythologising cult has been built, the only thing that holds LU together...

PCS and the results of the “pause”

It is almost six months since the Left Unity leadership of the civil service union PCS decided to “pause” PCS’s national pay, jobs, and pensions dispute, at the heart of which was a 2022/23 civil service wide pay claim for a consolidated 10% pay increase and a £15 per hour national underpin. They claimed that a “pause” — the cessation of all industrial action and the lapsing of all legal mandates to take strike action — would allow PCS nationally to engage with the government in talks about job security, low pay and pay coherence and allow PCS representatives in the huge number of civil...

PCS: Left Unity gets rattled

In the elections closing 14 December for General Secretary and Assistant General Secretary in PCS, the Independent Left (IL) is standing John Moloney for AGS and supporting Broad Left Network’s Marion Lloyd for GS, on a joint ticket. They run against the candidates of Left Unity (LU), which controls PCS but increasingly as a support mechanism for a narrow cabal of lay officials and senior bureaucrats. For the whole of the week starting 13 November, John Moloney led an official PCS solidarity delegation to Ukraine and represented PCS at the congress of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of...

Vote Lloyd-Moloney to rebuild union density

The elections for Assistant General Secretary (AGS) and General Secretary (GS) in PCS are underway (ballot opened 9 November, closes 14 December). The ruling Left Unity (LU) group is standing Fran Heathcote for GS and Paul O’Connor for AGS. Both will, if elected, take the enormous salary for these posts (guaranteed pay progression to £103,100 pa) in a union where, under their leadership, tens of thousands of members are on or close to the minimum wage. In contrast John Moloney, current PCS AGS and the candidate of the Independent Left (IL), has returned over £120k to the PCS Fighting Fund...

What is "left wing" in PCS?

The elections for Assistant General Secretary and General Secretary of the PCS civil service union commence on 9 November (and close 14 December). The ruling Left Unity (LU) group is standing Paul O’Connor for AGS and Fran Heathcote for GS. The PCS Independent Left (IL), including AWL supporters, is standing John Moloney for AGS and supporting Marion Lloyd, of the Broad Left Network (BLN), for GS. All formally left-wing candidates, but proclamations of “socialism” are never a sufficient guide in trade union elections. PCS’s LU leadership love to make “left wing” speeches. Yet under their...

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