Broad lefts and rank-and-file groups

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...

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 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...

PCS election is wide open

Elections for the posts of General Secretary (GS) and Assistant General Secretary (AGS) of the civil service union PCS will commence on 9 November (and close 14 December). The ruling Left Unity ( LU ) group’s candidates will be Fran Heathcote and Paul O’Connor. The historic critics and opponents of Left Unity, the PCS Independent Left ( IL ), will be standing John Moloney, the incumbent, for AGS and supporting Marion Lloyd of the Broad Left Network for GS. John Moloney has secured 87 branch nominations to Paul O’Connor’s 84 and Marion Lloyd 80 to Heathcote’s 90. Despite all their (ongoing)...

Vote Lloyd-Moloney from 9 November

The branch nomination period for the upcoming elections for General Secretary (GS) and Assistant General Secretary (AGS) of PCS, the largest civil service trade union, ended on 16 October. Voting will be 9 November to 14 December. Predictably, there are two sets of candidates: Fran Heathcote and Paul O’Connor, of the ruling Left Unity (LU) group, and Marion Lloyd and John Moloney, standing on a Broad Left Network and Independent Left ticket. There is a great deal at stake. In recent years PCS has been run by a small bureaucratic cabal of senior employed and lay officers on the basis of the LU...

PCS: vote for Lloyd and Moloney

Nominations for the General Secretary and Assistant General Secretary of the PCS civil service union closed on 16 October, and voting is 9 November to 14 December. Solidarity calls on readers to vote for Marion Lloyd and John Moloney. They are standing for a democratic fighting union and for rebuilding the national pay campaign, de facto trashed by the incumbent Left Unity faction. If elected they will take no more than their civil service workers’ pay, and return the rest of the bloated official salary to the union, as John Moloney already does. More here

Support Lloyd and Moloney in PCS!

Having killed the national campaign for cost of living pay awards backdated to 2022, the Left Unity (LU) faction leadership in the civil service union PCS is now presiding over below-inflation civil service pay awards for 2023. Yet they are keeping up the pretence that they have merely “paused” the campaign. It is a tactic they hope will help them win the elections for General Secretary (GS) and Assistant General Secretary (AGS) later this year: facing both ways to win the support of members who wanted the campaign to continue and members who did not want to strike. In doing so, LU is leaning...

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