Union elections

PCS left focus on living wage

The civil service union PCS has just completed a membership consultation on the 2019 civil service pay claim and campaign plan. A February meeting of the union’s National Executive (NEC) will “press the button” for a new civil service pay ballot. At a December NEC, general secretary Mark Serwotka and the leadership proposed a pay claim of 8-10%. Phil Dickens, a member of the PCS Independent Left , the organisation where Workers’ Liberty activists organise in within the union, proposed the following alternative claim: •A living wage of £10/hour (£11.55 in London) for the lowest grades • Pay at...

PCS: how to change the union

John Moloney is the Independent Left candidate for Assistant General Secretary of the civil service union PCS. Nominations opened on 17 January, and close on 7 March. Voting will run from 16 April to 9 May. Three rival candidates from the “broad left” bloc which has run the union for many years are also in play — Chris Baugh (the incumbent), Stella Dennis, and Lynn Henderson — though one of those may withdraw. Moloney has given an interview to Labour left magazine The Clarion outlining his platform in detail. One of the questions was: why is there so little to show for a decade and a half of...

PCS AGS election farce

Amidst farcical discord in the dominant Left Unity faction of the civil service union PCS, nominations open on 17 January for the union’s Assistant General Secretary. Voting will run from 16 April to 9 May. The AGS is the only full¬time officer other than the General Secretary elected by members. Months ago, the union’s president Janice Godrich (not a full¬time official as such, but someone seconded long¬term from her civil service job) announced that she would challenge Chris Baugh (the incumbent) for the Left Unity nomination. Both Godrich and Baugh were and remain members of the Socialist...

RMT elects first woman president

Michelle Rodgers has been elected president of the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport workers (RMT), becoming the first woman president in the union’s history. She won a comprehensive victory, with 7,198 votes; her two opponents, Steve Shaw and Jamie Nickles, took 4,598 and 443 votes respectively. Michelle works for Arriva Rail North at Manchester Piccadilly, where she is a local union rep, and has previously served on the union’s National Executive Committee. She is also the secretary of her RMT branch, Manchester South. The national presidential position is the RMT’s most senior...

Bust up in PCS Left Unity shows it's time for a new start

Click here for longer version of this article. In November, the PCS Independent Left (PCS IL) selected John Moloney, a genuine rank and file PCS activist with an outstanding campaigning and negotiating record, to contest the 2019 PCS election for Assistant General Secretary (AGS). Nominations open on 17 January, and voting will run from 16 April to 9 May. PCS’s dominant Left Unity (LU) faction has been divided since May into two warring camps, each backing a different member of the current PCS leadership to be the LU AGS candidate. The Socialist Party (SP) had chosen Chris Baugh, SP member...

Ructions in PCS

The Independent Left group in the PCS civil service workers’ union is standing John Moloney for Assistant General Secretary. Nominations open on 17 January, and balloting will run from 16 April to 9 May. The political platform on which John Moloney is standing is summarised here . It remains a possibility that the union machine will set the required number of branch nominations so high as to make it impossible for the Independent Left candidate to get on the ballot paper. But who the candidate will be to be favoured by such a restriction is not clear. A right-winger looks unlikely. PCS has...

How to beat the threshold

Now that the Public and Commercial Services union is on course for another national ballot in March 2019, a key question is what we need to do to beat the 50% turnout threshold this time. One option might be a disaggregated ballot. The civil service is the largest ballot constituency in the trade union movement. Whilst other unions are larger than PCS, their membership is spread across a great many employers in the public and private sector. No other union is likely to need to take such a large number of members into a dispute at once as PCS, and certainly not on any kind of regular basis. A...

Vote for Education Solidarity Network candidates

The National Education Union (NEU) is the largest union for school workers. It has been formed from the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), currently it carries forth the existing leaderships of both unions.

The ATL’s leadership is conservative...

Unite: Coyne’s appeal to Certification Officer fails

Gerard Coyne, the narrowly-defeated right wing candidate in last year’s Unite General Secretary election, has lost his appeal to the Certification Officer on all counts. The decision is not unexpected, following his previous failure to overturn the result of the election by appealing first to the Certification Officer and then to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT). It is a welcome knock-back for the right wing within the union. There can be no justification for Coyne’s attempt to seek revenge on Unite after losing the election by dragging the union through the courts, costing valuable time...

Michelle Rodgers for RMT National President!

Michelle Rodgers works for Arriva Rail North, where she is a local RMT rep. She sat on the union’s National Executive Committee from 2014-2017, and is the secretary of RMT Manchester South branch. She is standing to be the union’s next national president; Tubeworker is supporting her campaign. We...

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