PCS

Public & Commercial Services Union - trade union for civil servants

Union News in Brief, UNITE, PCS, CWU and NUT

UNITE:  You might think the leaders of a union whose members occupied the Visteon factories and took wildcat strike action in engineering construction would be pre-occupied with struggle. Yet Derek Simpson, joint General Secretary of Unite and his supporters seem to spend much timein an unedifying turf war. The most telling part of this tussle was the leaking of details about Simpson obscene pay and perks to the bourgeois media. The red-faced Gen Sec responded not by giving up his bosses’ lifestyle but by starting a hunt for the leakers. Kevin Coyne, a candidate in the recent Joint General...

John Moloney runs incumbent close in PCS Deputy General Secretary election

John Moloney, an AWL member, won 11,547 votes in the PCS Deputy General Secretary election, and so was only narrowly beaten by Hugh Lanning with 13,755. It was a very high vote for John Moloney considering that he was backed only by the small Independent Left group within the union, while Lanning was backed by all the other groups which took a position, from the mainstream right over to the Socialist Party and SWP. 1 May: Elections to the National Executive Committee [NEC] and senior full time official posts are currently underway in the civil service trade union PCS, including for the post of...

Vote John Moloney for PCS Deputy General Secretary!

The national pay debacle shows that the PCS national leadership needs a radical shake up and I am the DGS candidate to deliver it.

PCS needs to elect me as DGS because it needs a DGS who:

  • has consistently put forward coherent and imaginative ideas to win national pay, fight low pay, defend...

Vote John Moloney for PCS Deputy General Secretary

The coming election for Deputy General Secretary of the civil service union PCS will be a choice between the old centre-right of the union and a candidate, AWL member John Moloney, backed by the Independent Left. The PCS union “machine”, though on paper left wing — dominated by the Socialist Party — will be backing the centre-right candidate, Hugh Lanning. Lanning was the right-wing candidate defeated by left-winger Mark Serwotka in PCS's 2000 general election campaign. Since then he has got the deputy general secretary job — he is running for re-election — and worked closely with the union...

Union News in brief: PCS, public sector pensions, Sussex university technicians

CIVIL SERVICE: PCS has, for all practical purposes, announced the end of its national pay campaign. In a union circular, general secretary Mark Serwotka and union president Janice Godrich claim that the union has won major concessions. In fact the so-called deal is not a deal at all. It does not materially change the circumstances on the ground. It does not revisit the below-inflation pay awards of 2007. It does not reduce the number of different bargaining units into which the civil service is divided for pay negotiations (currently about 200). The announced concession is that the Government...

PCS and NUT: lessons for the left

The decisions by the PCS civil service union and the National Union of Teachers not to strike over pay in November mark a setback. The Government has imposed a two-and-a-bit per cent pay rise limit, a limit which cuts real wages. Over two pay rounds now, public-sector union leaders have put out vast volumes of talk about united union action to beat that limit. Both pay rounds have passed without any serious such joint action being organised. We should take stock both of the condition of the left in the unions, and of the effects of the economic crisis on the labour movement. The NUT's decision...

PCS leaders' explanation for calling off the 10 November strike

This is the full text of the PCS leadership's explanation to union reps of why the 10 November strike was called off. PCS suspends national industrial action over pay The PCS national executive committee met this morning and following their receipt of a letter from Sir Gus O'Donnell, head of the home civil service, have decided to suspend the industrial action planned from Monday 10 November and the overtime ban proposed to commence on Tuesday 11 November. Further information will be issued on Monday via this website. All PCS reps are asked to pass this message on to members. Letter from Gus O...

The SWP in PCS

The Socialist Workers Party has three members on the NEC as part of the Left Unity slate – Sue Bond, one of the National Vice Presidents, Andy Reid, and Paul Williams. Paul Williams is a serious trade union militant who AWL supporters suspect was placed on the NEC slate to stiffen the backbone of the SWP NEC members (for instance the then SWP NEC members, including Sue Bond, had supported the calling off the planned jobs, pay and pensions strike in 2005). Whatever the case, the fact is that the SWP’s PCS members have pretty much supported the approach of the NEC to national pay and the other...

PCS leaders' record on action for national pay

In November 2004 PCS members struck in support of six demands, including national pay. Yet pay never featured in the propaganda for the dispute. Similarly, in 2005, members were balloted on a number of demands – including jobs and pay - but were then told the planned strike, called off for the “two tier” pensions deal, was really only ever about pensions (and frankly pay again did not really feature in the membership bulletins). In 2004 AWL and Socialist Caucus supporters (now Independent Left supporters) moved a conference motion effectively calling on the NEC to organise a national ballot...

PCS leaders' record on national pay negotiations

In 2005 the PCS leadership said, “We have persuaded the Government to introduce a fairer, more coherent pay system…” It was typical of the spin that has come to characterise the PCS’s would-be Marxist leadership. The real truth is the Government had no intention of introducing a “fairer, more coherent” pay system (hence the need for the strike planned for Monday 10th November 2008). Indeed the lack of detail at the time showed that the PCS leadership either knew the Government was not so persuaded or it genuinely believed its own hype but had no idea what it had persuaded the Government to do...

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