Vote Marion Lloyd for PCS president and a fighting NEC
Fiona Brittle, PCS National Executive Committee (personal capacity)
A fighting, democratic PCS is within grasp, as national leadership elections get under way in the union representing civil service workers and workers on national privatised contracts, from 16 April to 9 May.
Activists in PCS (including Socialist Party members) are campaigning and leafleting at workplaces across the UK to raise support for the programme of action agreed by the left coalition, and its candidates for the National President and National Executive Committee (NEC).
Now more than ever it is vital that PCS is led by a strong socialist leadership that will stand up to our employers and governments, as Keir Starmer’s programme of Labour austerity gathers speed. Just last week, Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden declared his department would be “leading by example” with “mutually agreed exits”. This was followed by announcements that the Cabinet Office will be cut by as much as a third – just the beginning of a cull of civil servants.
This spells disaster for civil servants at risk of losing their jobs – but it also means a massive decrease in the capacity to provide and improve the quality of public services for working-class people across the UK. PCS members need their trade union to defend them, and yet the silence from PCS National President Martin Cavanagh and General Secretary Fran Heathcote has been deafening.
Articles on the cuts carry quotes from the FDA and Prospect, two much smaller and more conservative trade unions within the civil service, expressing concerns and promising to “engage” with the government. Why is this the voice of trade unions in the civil service, where is PCS? Where is the call to rally our workers and take them out on strike to defend their jobs, as they mandated us to do?
When 50% staffing cuts to NHS England was announced in March, Marion Lloyd (Socialist Party member and convenor of the PCS NEC Left majority coalition) wrote to Martin Cavanagh requesting an emergency NEC to agree a fighting response to defend our members and the thousands of other working-class people in the organisation. Cavanagh denied this as he believed no emergency decisions were required.
His and Heathcote’s faction within PCS, the misnamed Left Unity (LU), immediately produced an article calling the request electioneering. The article, sounding more like an email from senior management than a supposedly socialist trade union faction, rejected the need for action as the government has “comprehensively dismissed” media characterisations of their plans to take a chainsaw to the civil service. LU also shamefully published PCS’s density in NHS England as an argument not to bother organising there – sending a clear signal to Labour to forge ahead, as we won’t be fighting their cuts on LU’s watch.
This is who socialists within PCS are battling against for control of our union. It is not a minor skirmish over irrelevant ‘factional’ differences. We are up against a group dedicated to undermining effective industrial struggle by our members, and giving bureaucratic support to a pro-capitalist, pro-business government that couldn’t be clearer about its intention to carry out austerity and attack our members.
Enough is enough. Poor leadership has plagued PCS members for too long, and blocked us from achieving the wage rises, job security and working conditions we desperately need and deserve. LU, as the former NEC majority, refused to build and implement fighting campaigns, leaving us behind other public sector workers. They continue to block socialist strategies through undemocratic presidential decree, even after losing their majority and the support of members at the last elections.
We need as much support as possible from all those who want to fight Labour austerity and the cuts over the next few weeks, to help us turn out the vote and ensure that we elect Marion Lloyd as President, and a left coalition NEC majority.
