PCS, the union which represents civil servants, held its Annual Delegate Conference in Brighton from 20 to 23 May.
The conference took place in the midst of a ramping up of the government’s attempts to break the union. The effect of Francis Maude’s drastic cuts to facility time could be seen in the number of delegates having to use their own leave to attend – with a 30% reduction in attendance from Department for Work and Pensions reps, and some branches unrepresented entirely.
But if the effects of the attacks from outside could be felt, so too could the effects of cost-cutting from within. Conference was a day shorter, one of many attempts to balance the books in the past year. Subs income is shrinking as the civil service gets smaller, and as it stands the union has an operating deficit of £2.4 million.
This has led to a number of bizarre contradictions. The union has made voluntary redundancies among its own staff in the past year and employed other cost-cutting measures. Yet, with the National Executive Committee leading the opposition, conference voted down a rather moderate motion to review and rationalise the salaries of its highest paid full time officials as an “attack on workers.”
There were a broad variety of other subjects debated this year. These ranged from industrial issues such as new performance procedures aimed at identifying the “bottom 10%” of civil servants to social and political matters like Scottish independence, climate change and Israel-Palestine.
One of the big issues for many people was the prospect of a merger with Unite. Motions mandating the NEC on opening talks if approached passed, but only very narrowly after a card vote – where instead of a show of hands from delegates present, each delegation puts a card into a ballot box which counts for the equivalent number of votes to members in their branch.
Opposition covered a number of issues such as affiliation to the Labour Party and the contrast between PCS’s lay-led democracy and Unite’s full time officer dominated bureaucracy. Support, on the other hand, included bizarre proclamations such as stating that refusal to merge was equivalent to the Stalinist theory of socialism in one country. It is safe to say that loyalty to the NEC and the ruling Left Unity faction, rather than any convincing rational argument, narrowly dragged a positive vote through.
However, whilst much air time was given to this debate, it wasn’t the most vital issue debated at conference. That honour was shared between the national campaign against austerity and non-cooperation with benefit sanctions.
The national campaign
The reason that PCS is such a beacon for the left is its stance on austerity. Where public sector giants like Unison had to be dragged into the strike coalition of 30 November 2011, and annihilated it to sign a deal at the very first opportunity, PCS has continued to strike a defiant line against government austerity. Hence the Socialist Party, which dominates its national executive, labelling it as the “fighting left leadership” of the trade union movement.
The problem is that, while it isn’t hard to develop a strategy more militant than “wait for Labour in 2015,” this doesn’t mean that PCS isn’t still severely limited in its campaigning. At last year’s conference, the leadership pushed through a campaign strategy which explicitly mandated them to not take action if they did not have other unions at their side. This after calling an emergency conference for activists that January vowing to fight on despite the capitulation of Unison and the TUC, and managing to pull together strike action on May 10.
Most of the left – and the right-wing media, which always loves to scream about “union barons” – loyally sold this as the union vowing to take the government on. Whereas militants within PCS argued that what had passed would guarantee nothing except a longer period of inaction. As it turns out, I was over-generous when I suggested that there would be one token day of coordinated action late in 2012, because of course such a thing never transpired.
This year was different. A fresh ballot in February has seen PCS out on its own, and both the leadership and conference backed calls for rolling action, paid selective action, walkouts and other disruptive tactics. Mark Serwotka echoed his own critics of a year before by stating that one-day protest strikes aren’t enough and the aim had to be serious disruption if we were to get anywhere.
The reason why was hinted at a number of times in the opening debate. The national executive’s motion was up against another motion which seemed on the basis of the instructions to compliment it. The difference was that the leadership’s motion applauded itself for “the wide-ranging consultation prior to and during the ballot, which shaped the subsequent action.” The rival motion support “the efforts of rank-and-file PCS reps and members” who staged walkouts and protests and “set the agenda for the national union to follow.” It also censured the national executive “for its failure to mount an effective national campaign and to offer the leadership that the TUC refused to” until forced into action by the rank-and-file.
Wildcat walkouts in Coventry gave birth to the Civil Service Rank & File (CSRF) Network, which staged further actions on the 14 November European Day of Action last year. This led to a copycat “day of protest” by PCS on 30 November, swiftly followed by the issuing of demands to the Cabinet Office and the ballot for strike action in the new year.
But if the actual timeline of events wasn’t enough to demonstrate how the union was moving to avoid being outflanked by its own rank-and-file, this came out in the debates at conference too. Nobody could deny – or answer – the influence of the rank-and-file. In fact, several speakers supporting the leadership motion also commended it and the very phrase became a meme throughout conference. Instead, they spoke against a desire to slow down action that simply wasn’t there and ignored the possibility of anything existing to the left of the leadership.
It is also worth noting the motion put forward to establish a strike fund which was never heard. This is disappointing since it seems that without the ability to call people out for longer with strike pay even the new more disruptive campaign isn’t employing all potential weapons in its arsenal.
Nonetheless, what passed can on the whole be considered positive. The fact that strikes are being organised as more than just a form of protest is definitely a step in the right direction. But rank-and-file militants definitely need to remain on their toes as the campaign progresses. The leadership has rejected calls to emphasise concrete demands over the need for “talks,” and since the main spur for PCS being more militant than other unions is that it has been frozen out by the government, we have to keep a watchful eye on what it might surrender for a seat at the negotiating table.
Benefit sanctions
Another area where rank-and-file intervention has shaped debate this year is the question of benefit sanctions. Specifically, the role of DWP staff in enacting them and the possibility of them refusing to do so.
The idea of DWP staff boycotting sanctions has been raised many times before and by numerous groups. In all cases, where there has been a response from PCS at all, the response has been the same: this would only put jobs at risk and is not something the union is prepared to do, please stop asking and wait for the totemic 24 hour general strike to solve our problems.
Ahead of conference, motions were put forward from various PCS branches to DWP Group Conference and to national conference urging non-cooperation with the sanctions regime. They gained a lot of publicity and support from claimants groups straight away, and when PCS rules required them to be omitted from the agenda on the basis of legal problems should they be implemented, there was uproar.
This led the CSRF Network, whose supporters were among those putting motions forward, to call a demonstration outside conference. It was supported by Disabled People Against Cuts, Boycott Workfare, the Brighton Benefits Campaign and the Disabled Activist Network Cymru.
As a result of the furore and the promised demo, debate raged. The PCS leadership went on the defensive as to why this policy wasn’t practical or even necessary and this only stoked the flames further. Meanwhile, several emergency motions were put forward hoping to put non-cooperation back on the agenda without falling foul of the legal issues which had seen off the original proposals.
As a result of rank-and-file intervention and pressure from claimants, the motion on non-cooperation that made the agenda carried without opposition. Resistance from the leadership had become qualified support. After all of the controversy that had raged for weeks, the discussion in the conference hall was rather muted. Observed in isolation from the events preceding it, it would have been hard to see just how significant a moment this was.
However, by the same token its importance shouldn’t be overstated either. Getting the motions heard and passed at conference was only a means to open up the debate and underline the fact that non-cooperation was not impossible.
The motion which passed instructs the NEC only “to explore the possibility of including non-cooperation with benefit sanctions in the next ballot for industrial action which arises from an appropriate and legitimate trade dispute.” Whilst a step forward, this is clearly not enough in itself. Sanctions against claimants are an explicitly political attack on the most vulnerable section of the working class. They should be boycotted not just to win gains for DWP workers but in order to destroy the sanctions regime itself.
There is now an argument to be won with workers in Jobcentres against sanctioning and for a practical unity with claimants to take on austerity. We also need to explore how direct action by claimants can support this. This has to start on the ground in workplaces and communities. If the PCS leadership follow through on the motion passed (a point I cannot overstate my scepticism towards) then great, but we should have no qualms about leaving them behind in the very likely event that they don’t.
If there is one over-arching “message” from PCS’s annual conference, I don’t know what it was. Such events merely offer us a snapshot of debates and struggles that go on all year round. But there seemed more people willing to act independent of the leadership where necessary this year than there were last year. That, if nothing else, is cause to be a little optimistic.
