PCS

By a PCS activist In his June 2006 Mansion House speech Gordon Brown promised to peg increases in the public sector pay bill to 2% over two years. It is symptomatic of his politics that he should assure an audience of rich men and women of his commitment to cutting the real pay of many thousands of public sector workers in this way. Public sector workers have to take pay cuts while the public sector paid out nearly £2 billion last year to external consultants — leading even the Tory Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Edward Leigh, to comment, “.. a good proportion of [the pay out] looks...

By a PCS member THE 1st May “Labour Day” strike by PCS, the largest civil service union, saw action by 200,000 civil and public servants disrupt the administration of Britain - a bitter farewell to Tony Blair and a “enough is enough” message to Gordon Brown. It was the second national one-day strike over pay, job cuts and privatisation by PCS members and all the signs are that the support for the second day was as high as it was for the first. The action hit jobcentres, benefits offices, customs, tax offices, the courts (including the Old Bailey where only three of 20 courts were open), the...

By Pat Murphy All the main public-sector unions have now taken some sort of position in favour of united industrial action to force pay rises at least matching inflation and to break the two per cent limit decreed by Gordon Brown for both 2007-8 and 2008-9. The question now is, who will take the initiative to turn this talk into action? In June 2006 Gordon Brown promised that he would peg increases in the public sector pay bill to 2% over the next two years. This is a year-on-year promise to cut real pay for millions of workers. With inflation currently running at nearly 5%, two per cent means...

By Tom Unterrainer Unions of teachers, health workers, and civil service workers are all moving towards strikes to challenge Gordon Brown’s decree for pay cuts in the public sector. On 17 April, the conference of the Royal College of Nursing voted by 95% to take nationwide industrial action for the first time since the RCN was set up in 1916. The GMB union reported that its members in the health service had voted 74% to support strike action over pay, and 91% to support industrial action short of strikes. At the conference of the National Union of Teachers, over the Easter weekend, the union...

Members of the civil service union PCS will shortly receive ballot papers for the union’s national executive (NEC) and “group” (sector) executive elections. For the first time, members will have the chance to vote for a clear, class-struggle alternative to the Left Unity leadership in the form of PCS Independent Left. Since the election of Mark Serwotka as General Secretary in 2000 and the subsequent establishment of a Left Unity majority on the NEC, LU and its strongest component, the Socialist Party, have presented PCS as having a fighting, socialist leadership. In fact, the union’s record...

PCS members at the Passport Service held a one day strike on 2 April against the below-inflation 1.9% pay offer from Gordon Brown. An estimated 20,000 PCS members in UKPS and Ministry of Defence civilian workers took part in the action, with other PCS members taking full lunch and rest breaks and not taking on work to do with striking departments in solidarity. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said “Battered by massive job cuts and privatisation, dedicated staff across the civil service have become increasingly angry about the government using their pay as an anti-inflationary measure.” PCS...

THE PCS has announced that a national one day strike for 1 May. The union's press release says: “As part of our national campaign to defend jobs, services, pay and conditions, PCS is calling on all our members who were balloted in January to take national strike action on 1 May, followed by a two week overtime ban from 2 to 15 May. “At its meeting on 29 March, our National Executive Committee re-affirmed its commitment to obtaining a negotiated settlement on our national campaign demands. “Discussions have taken place with senior officials and ministers. But they have yet to agree to formal...

By THE No One Is Illegal campaign For the first time an alliance of trade union General Secretaries have come together in support of a refugee in detention and under threat of deportation. The refugee is Alphonsus Uche Okafor-Mefor. The General Secretaries are: Paul Mackney of UCU (the University and Colleges Union), Mark Serwotka of the PCS (Public and Commercial Service Union), Jeremy Dear of the NUJ (National Union of Journalists), Bob Crow of the RMT (Rail, Maritime and Transport), Tony Woodley of the TGWU (Transport and General Workers). They have all written to the Minister responsible...

By a civil servant More than 150,000 PCS members took strike action on 31 January, more than the last national dispute on 5 November 2005. This was a solid start has been made to the campaign against cuts in the service. The union is demanding: no compulsory guarantee; a better pay system; and union agreement on outsourcing/privatisations. The need for a national pay system (which is our definition of a fairer pay system) has been brought home sharply by events in the Department of Constitutional Affairs (DCA). DCA have imposed a below inflation pay offer on the 24,000 staff in that department...

by a civil servant The 31 January national strike action by the UK's largest civil service union, the PCS, brought widespread disruption to Government and saw an upbeat and determined mood amongst activists on the picket lines. The breadth of the action, and membership support, was revealed by: * The suspension of all Welsh Assembly business; * In Scotland over 90% of civil servants struck with picket lines at every government office; * Visitors to London learned of the dispute as the reading rooms at the British Library were closed as were most of the galleries; * Woolwich Crown Court was...