The general secretary of the civil service union PCS was a rank and file militant and is considerably to the left of most general secretaries. The union’s national executive is dominated by Left Unity — an alliance of socialist groups and left-wing independents. PCS was key to putting together the public sector-wide action over pensions.
On the face of it there is not a more left wing-led union in Britain or one less likely to call off a strike, especially one ostensibly over pay and jobs as well as pensions.
Yet call off the strike they did, with only one National Executive Committee (NEC) member, AWL member John Moloney, voting against.
For PCS members the only gain achieved is the promise of negotiations. The union did not obtain a single material gain for members. (And, remember, the PCS strike was to be over jobs and pay as well as pensions.)
As the PCS Socialist Caucus says: “There have been no pledges to reduce the number of job losses; no slowing of the pace of the job cuts; no guarantees on compulsory redundancies; nothing on levelling up wages to the highest already existing in the Civil Service.”
The Government’s intentions — and its confidence — could have been tested if the PCS national executive had sought material concessions from it as a testament to its good faith. Yet the NEC rejected even that proposal from John Moloney.
It is astounding that when the other side comes asking for talks, at the midnight hour and in the run-up to a general election, the would-be radicals of the PCS leadership shy away from seeking further concessions. Why?
Were some people afraid that a clear government rebuff would have undermined the value of the offer of “genuine negotiations” as a justification for calling off the strike?
Instead the union leadership has exaggerated the significance of a “peace” letter to PCS from Cabinet Secretary Andrew Turnball.
The PCS leadership has claimed: “The Government has agreed to implement national level measures to avoid compulsory redundancies in the civil service.” In fact Turnbull said, in reference to formal machinery already established with the Council of Civil Service Unions, that the Government is “seeking to avoid compulsory redundancies”, a weaker formulation and one already, previously granted to the union.
The PCS leadership has also claimed: “We have persuaded the Government to introduce a fairer, more coherent pay system in the civil service.” However, whilst Turnbull’s letter does indeed talk of “a more coherent pay system for the Civil Service”, it makes no mention whatever of a fairer pay system.
The spinning of Turnbull’s letter by the PCS leadership reveals its lack of confidence in the membership and a belief that PCS could not proceed without the other unions.
This line of reasoning effectively rules out serious PCS national action on jobs and pay unless and until, somehow, PCS persuades other unions, critically Unison, to come to its aid on these Civil Service-specific matters.
This approach is essentially that of the Socialist Party, which argues that PCS needs public sector-wide industrial action if it is to fight effectively. Yet on its website the Socialist Party describes the Unison leadership as “passive, bureaucratic… too close to New Labour — for public sector workers that means too close to the bosses.”
On that (correct) description, the PCS NEC was right to seek public sector-wide industrial action but patently wrong to rely on the Unison leadership to defend PCS members’ pay, jobs and pensions. Indeed, to the extent that PCS fights with or without Unison, and seeks rank and file links across the public sector unions, there will be more internal pressure on the Unison leadership to fight.
The NEC has argued that for PCS to strike on its own on 23 March would beg the question of what would be achieved over and above the offer of pension negotiations. Given that the NEC refused even to ask for more concessions, this is a cheeky argument.
But at the very least a strike would have demonstrated to the Government that PCS’s leadership had membership support and was capable of delivering serious national action.
We are now left with the possibility (one that even the Socialist Party concedes) that New Labour is positioning itself to fight another day.
This raises the danger of PCS losing its strike mandate for discontinuous action. Under the anti-union laws, if PCS does not take industrial action within a certain period of the ballot result it will have to ballot again. Some members of the NEC seem relaxed about this possibility. They are wrong to be — not least because of the scale and pace of job cuts.
If serious concessions are not quickly forthcoming then PCS should call members out. In the meantime activists should do all they can to rebuild membership combativity and cross-union links.
