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) advantages, the elections are now more open than the LU leadership were expecting and that has been a shock to their bureaucratic complacency.

Advantage

They knew — plotted — before everyone else in PCS that there would be GS and AGS elections this year. The current General Secretary, part of the narrow leadership team, is resigning part way through office; they brought forward the AGS election (John Moloney first learned of these planned moves the same day as the National Executive Committee (NEC)); and they established an election timetable that they thought would be advantageous to them.

In a transparent attempt to boost the AGS election prospects of unelected long-term full-time officer Paul O’Connor, he was paraded around departmental conferences in May; he was chosen, without precedent, to reply on behalf of the NEC to a motion at the Annual Delegate Conference despite not being an elected or ex-officio member of the NEC; and he has been plastered over PCS media.

With their promotion of O’Connor, with Heathcote easily the best known lay official as national President, with their control of the union machine, the LU leadership cabal was expecting a big lead in branch nominations and a shoo-in victory. They are now significantly less confident.

They have responded in diversionary fashion, risibly claiming that “a highly sectarian campaign of mudslinging” has resulted in Moloney and Lloyd being “nominated by more branches than expected.”

The “mud-slinging” consists of pointing out, for example, that:

• They called off our pay campaign for a fully consolidated, backdated, 10% for 2022 in exchange for a very restricted £1,500 unconsolidated lump sum that was paid pro rata to our overwhelmingly female part time members, despite the payment supposedly being compensation for high inflation.

• The LU leadership explicitly endorsed lower compensation to part time members.

• PCS received the worst public sector pay settlement in 2023.

It is evident that the ruling cabal’s misleadership, mismanagement, and abuse of the union, and the Independent Left’s relentless exposure of their behaviour over many months, has seen significant support drain from LU and move to John Moloney and Marion Lloyd.

Heathcote and O’Connor lack a programme for addressing the fundamental problems gripping PCS and its members, problems which have grown on their watch. Thoughtful and principled members of LU should cease to provide support to the career project of its leaders.

For IL members, now is the time to turn out the vote for Moloney and Lloyd.