As we write, many PCS activists are preparing for a branch based campaign meeting, to be held on Monday 19 June, that will seek to cohere opposition to the settlement of the civil service pay dispute and the abandonment of our claims.
Although it is a branch based campaign, one that seeks to reach out to all opponents of the leadership on this single, critical, issue, it is right to note that it is the PCS Independent Left which has driven this non-sectarian approach. (More: @PCSsayNo)
The PCS leadership continues to squeeze all oxygen from the dispute. They hope that, with each week that passes without any nationally led action, a greater number of members will conclude that the campaign for our pay and job security demands is dead.
The PCS leadership is still trying to dress up and flog, as the basis for calling off our dispute, a 2 June package of Government measures that were not all new, that in important respects had previously been dismissed by the leadership as inadequate, that did not in any single aspect constitute an offer to the national union, and that does not come near to meeting our claims.
At a Facebook live meeting with PCS members and representatives on Monday 12 June, the PCS leadership turned to the old right wing tactic of suggesting or implying that the very large number of activists who oppose the calling off the dispute are out of touch with members.
These are the same activists who delivered record membership turnouts in successive industrial action ballots, record “Yes” votes for industrial action, and record picket line turnouts. Many of them are young people who threw themselves into a strike campaign for the first time in their lives and are the future lifeblood of PCS.
Virtually nobody “in the ranks” is saying that the Tory “package” is a good package. The level of disappointment and anger will grow as the problems with the minor Tory concessions, such as they are, become more apparent.
For example, it emerged on Friday that the Department for Levelling Up, citing the government’s own guidance, will only grant part time staff a reduced unconsolidated lump sum payment, pro rata to contracted hours, instead of the full £1,500 that the Tories have given departments “discretion” to pay. It seems that departments may do the same.
This is despite the fact that the £1,500 is supposedly to be paid in recognition of the high inflation pressures that all civil servants have been experiencing, irrespective of the number of hours staff work. Part time staff throughout the civil service and the wider economy are overwhelmingly female.
Yet the PCS General Secretary, Mark Serwotka, the Left Unity President Fran Heathcote, and overwhelming majority of NEC Left Unity members, signed off on the £1,500 payment as a basis for dispute resolution without insisting that the lump sum be paid in full to all members and without any equality impact assessment. §