Solidarity 496, 20 February 2019

As reported in Solidarity earlier this year there are likely to be three candidates in total vying to be the next Assistant General Secretary of PCS following incumbent Chris Baughs’ victory over senior union employee Stella Dennis for the nomination of the leadership faction, Left Unity. Baugh’s victory has led to a bit of a fallout in the leadership camp. Strongly opposed by Mark Serwotka and the ‘grandees’ of the union’s leadership, including the acting President and majority of Vice-Presidents on the grounds of ‘conservatism, ‘defeatism’ and ‘opposition to union and Left Unity policy’ it...

Universal Credit Service Centre workers in PCS at the Walsall and Wolverhampton offices are the first to ballot for strike action over staffing levels and capacity within the Universal Credit operations in DWP. Members have long standing grievances with DWP bosses over a horrific lack of staff (their demand is for at least 5000 new staff to cope with the workload), a reduction in the amount of calls per day each worker is expected to handle and an end to the draconian target driven culture in offices. While the employer has finally accepted that staffing levels are too low and announced extra...

The PCS NEC has agreed to hold a re-ballot of civil service members this March. The ballot will run from the 18th of March to the 29th of April and will hopefully reach the 50% turnout required by the anti-union laws, falling 8% short of that threshold last year. The amount of members balloted this year as part of this national ballot is slightly less at 120,000 to allow bargaining units that are not ‘core civil service’ - and therefore not subject to the same pay regime - to choose to opt-in to the pay campaign. At the NEC PCS Independent Left made a number of alternative proposals to the...