By a civil servant
Two hundred and eighty thousand members of the civil service union PCS are being balloted for national strike action over job losses and pay. Activists in the PCS Socialist Caucus are working flat out to deliver the biggest possible "Yes", "Yes".
On jobs, the Government could easily give the union a no compulsory redundancy guarantee. In fact even in terms of its own financial orthodoxies, New Labour could easily stop all the cuts, as they are wholly politically driven.
Of course a no compulsory redundancy guarantee does not stop the cuts; implicitly it is an acknowledgement that they are happening and will happen. The only argument involved is over how they will happen — will it be voluntary means or by compulsion.
Whilst no compulsory redundancies is an important first demand, Socialist Caucus and AWL think the union should relaunch the whole political argument as to why the job cuts should not happen - full stop. PCS has occasionally done this in this in a piece meal fashion; we think the argument needs to be made through systematic, high profile campaigning. The appetite for the cuts amongst back bench Labour MPs is now gone, as they see what it means in practice and as they weigh up the political consequences of such cuts. Why isn't the union capitalising on this?
There are real concerns that the national pay demands will not be seriously campaigned for.
Think back to the November 2004 strike: it was billed as being over six demands, national pay being one. After the event, members were told that the strike was in fact about jobs — the other demands magically disappearing. Ditto with the national ballot in 2005. Members were balloted on a number of demands — again including pay — but we were then told it was about pensions.
We have to keep pressure on the executive to ensure that the pay demands do not go the same way again this time. If they do then the pay round in 2007 will be just a rerun of 2006 i.e. real cuts in pay for DEFRA and other departments and agencies. Why is the PCS leadership incapable of linking demands around pay, jobs, pensions and so on, as part of a unified campaign?
We also fear that this will be a rerun of the recent struggle in the DWP, which has seen the loss of 20,000 jobs — which but this time with the fiasco on a national scale.
The DWP leadership is in essence the national union leadership, dominated by the Socialist Party. At both DWP and national level this leadership has turned its face against any sort of selective action; there will be no levy nor are groups being canvassed to find vulnerable areas to take out.
Probably there will be a strike on 31 January (barring some last minute deal) and then, as in the DWP dispute, a one or two day strike a month or so later; then a big gap of a few months and then another strike etc. There may be other disputes in parallel to the national one e.g. in HMRC over job losses; but essentially the union will run a very low-intensity campaign.
This is not a recipe for winning against the government!
The DWP dispute was hastily and badly settled when it became clear that the above
tactics were not working. Yet we are going to repeat them on a national scale.
We must conduct the dispute in a different way. That means a levy, selective action and other actions alongside national strikes and the most vigorous political campaigning we can get. So we need a "Yes" on jobs and a "Yes" on pay in the ballot but a real debate over how to fight has to start.
• The Socialist Caucus in PCS has called a special meeting for Saturday 27 January from 12-4pm at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 (nearest tube: Holborn).
