30.05.2012
Reality behind the fighting talk
The May 23-25 annual conference exposed the weaknesses of Britain's biggest civil service union, says Tina Becker
Having been an observer at the annual conference of the Public and Commercial Services union, I was rather surprised to read a report in The Independent that stated:
“The biggest civil service union today threatened another strike in protest at the government’s controversial pension reforms amid claims that the coalition ‘unleashed hell’ against workers and communities through its spending cuts. The Public and Commercial Services union agreed to build towards fresh walkouts at the end of next month with as many unions as possible unless talks over the pension changes are reopened.”[1]
You cannot really blame The Independent’s journalist for deciding not to sit through three long days of debate (especially when the weather in Brighton was extremely nice). However, you would have expected a media representative to at least listen to the discussion that followed the speech of general secretary Mark Serwotka to the conference lead motion. Had he done that, our scribe would have been able to report a much more interesting and complex dynamic.
In fact, while the resolution that was overwhelmingly passed commits the national executive committee to push for a strike at the end of June, it crucially contains the caveat, “with as many unions as possible and to take final decisions once the position of other unions becomes clear”. In other words: PCS will not fight by itself.
In reality, conference had to deal with the fact that all of the union’s key allies in the fight against the so-called “pension reforms” seem to have pulled out of joint action in June. Unison has turned its back. The executive of the National Union of Teachers has agreed to work with other teaching unions towards joint actions in the autumn instead, which might or might not include strike action.[2] And it currently looks pretty unlikely that Unite will come out in favour of a strike at this late hour.
The NUT and Unite in particular have been “our allies on the TUC and were the only unions that voted to re-negotiate the pensions deal”, said Serwotka. The “reforms” will see the pension age raised to 68 and employees’ contributions upped dramatically (that already began in April this year). Add to that inflation and the fact that wages in the civil service have been frozen for the last couple of years and you have a dramatic worsening of the financial situation of hundreds of thousands of the lowest paid people in Britain. Average civil service pay is £22,850 a year, and 63% of civil servants earn less than £25,000.[3]
As the motion commits the PCS to “not going it alone”, as comrade Serwotka put it, that effectively means that PCS will not go on strike in June after all. But only a small minority of delegates pointed out this obvious fact - and argued to ‘go it alone’ in any case. Charlie McDonald of the recently depleted Independent Left within PCS warned: “It shouldn’t be our policy to wait for rightwingers like Dave Prentis of Unison or fake leftists like Christine Blower of the NUT” (here he was revealing his membership of the Alliance of Workers’ Liberty, for whom everybody else on the left is “fake”). Similarly, Lee Rock (one of the people who left the IL), said that “of course it is a blow that the NUT have pulled out. There’s no guarantee that we will win if we go it alone. But there’s a guarantee that we will lose if we don’t even try to fight back.”
This small opposition argued that “naming the day” for strike action might force unions like Unite, Unison and the NUT to follow suit. It is debatable whether this tactic would work. Mark Serwotka was right to point out that “going it alone would be an incredibly high-risk strategy. Imagine Francis Maude’s face if there are fewer members on strike than there were on May 10. It would be deeply demoralising for our members.” He has a point, of course. But taking no action at all is the worst of all possibilities (it became clear during the debate that “selective” or “targeted” strike action was not a tactic that the NEC considers worthwhile - it has put all its eggs in the ‘joint action’ basket).
I was surprised to see no more than 50 of the 1,000 or so delegates vote against the lead motion. Clearly, members have no confidence that they can win this fight - and the union leadership does not give them confidence. There might be more joint strike action in autumn. But for now the union has rolled over.
Lack of opposition
PCS is not just hampered by the fact that the Socialist Party in England and Wales bureaucratically dominates the organisation from top to bottom. The opposition is woefully weak and divided as well. A particularly unhelpful role is once again being played by the Socialist Workers Party, which has two comrades on the NEC.
The pre-conference report in Socialist Worker argues: “Unity with other unions cannot be used as an excuse not to call action. Over and over again during the dispute, unions have reached a stalemate, with each spending weeks saying to the others, ‘We’ll call a strike when you do.’ That cannot continue.”[4] Fighting talk. On the day, however, the comrades voted in favour of the NEC motion. Funnily enough, a long-standing SWP member tried to speak against it - it turned out he had missed that morning’s SWP caucus.
It gets worse. While the post-conference report in Socialist Worker does not actually mention how SWP comrades voted, it clearly implies that they voted against the motion. It approvingly quotes the conference speech by SWP member Anna Owens: “We proved that by taking action we pulled other unions behind us - we need to use the same tactic again.”[5] The report fails to mention that she and her comrades then went on to vote exactly against using this tactic.
This is dishonest in the extreme. However, this results from a common situation for the revolutionary left. In order to gain seats on union leaderships, they agree to keep quiet on controversial issues - many eventually ‘go native’.
In 2005, PCS NEC members Sue Bond and Martin John (both in the SWP) voted in favour of a pension deal that sold away the rights of new entrants (in cahoots of course with Mark Serwotka and SPEW). This deal in a sense opened the way for the current assault. Eventually, after exposure of their action on the left (not least in the Weekly Worker) and growing complaints from other SWP members, the SWP leadership was moved to take action against these renegades. Sue Bond got off lightly following her letter of apology and still sits on the PCS NEC, but Martin John flounced out of the SWP the day before he was due to face a meeting of the organisation’s PCS fraction (and was made a PCS full-timer almost immediately)
Similarly in 2009, SWP member Jane Loftus used her position on the executive of the Communication Workers Union to vote to accept an “interim agreement”, which effectively ended the union’s opposition to the attacks on working conditions imposed by Royal Mail. After demands by the SWP leadership, she eventually resigned from the party. But she had been voting for similarly bad deals for many years.[6]
While in theory SPEW supports the principled demand for a “workers’ representative on a workers’ wage”, its comrades consistently vote against the demand when it is brought up at PCS conference (that is, in those rare cases that such a motion is actually heard and not just “guillotined” by the SPEW-controlled standing orders committee). After all, it would be their own pockets that would be hit - dozens of SPEW members are now employed by the PCS.
There are plenty of perks to the job and other social pressures which weigh upon those who enter the upper echelons of the union structures. A revolutionary party should be constantly on guard and fighting against the effects of these pressures on its militants, yet the actions of the SWP and SPEW leadership often do just the opposite of that. Their desire to get close to and win the approval of ‘left’ union leaders creates a culture of diplomatic silence and conciliationism.
Financial troubles
While the PCS styles itself as a “campaigning, fighting union”, its ability to act as one is severely restricted by the dire state of its finances. Comrade Serwotka reported that 11,000 new members have joined since June 2011, but because of the massive job losses in the public sector, many more have left. Several years ago, membership peaked at 320,000 - now it stands at about 280,000. This means that “we now have £5 million less income than last year”, Serwotka explained.
PCS treasurer and SPEW member Chris Baugh later outlined that “over 50% of our income goes towards paying wages, staff pensions and national insurance contributions of PCS full-timers”. Incidentally, PCS employees - represented by the General, Municipal, Boilermakers and Allied Trade Union (GMB) - managed to escape any pay freeze.
Considering the dire personal financial situation of many PCS members, it is understandable that most resist a hike in their contributions. But there are some serious anomalies that undermine any attempt to build an effective union. Membership contributions are set at 0.6% of gross income. That is half, for example, of what most union members in Germany pay. Also, there is a cap, which currently stands at £12.68 per month. That means anybody earning more than £25,360 pays actually less than 0.6%. The more you earn, the lower the percentage you have to pay towards your union membership. Ridiculous.
To make matters worse, the union does not have a strike fund. If PCS members go on strike, they simply lose the pay for that day. In the old Civil and Public Services Association, 15% of members’ fees went towards the union’s strike fund. Those on strike were paid between 50% and 85% of their average wage after the first day of strike action. But after the merger with the National Union of Civil and Public Services to form the PCS, this was replaced by voluntary local hardship funds.
The lack of a strike fund in effect means that the employer (ie, the state) knows from the start that it can more easily sit out any strike action the PCS will take. After all, how long can people go without receiving any pay? During the miners’ Great Strike of 1984-85, the union’s funds soon ran out and the strikers could only continue thanks to solidarity donations from the public - but this is difficult to replicate in today’s political situation.
At this year’s PCS conference, there was an attempt to change this, albeit a pretty half-hearted one. Comrade Rock moved a motion penned by the AWL-dominated Independent Left that sought to establish a “voluntary levy” to help fund “selective strike action”. Hardly revolutionary stuff, you might think.
But SPEW and the SWP strongly opposed the motion on the grounds that “we cannot ask people to finance solidarity with others when they just had a pay freeze”, as Anna Owens put it. Dave Vincent opposed the motion for a number of rather spurious reasons, amongst them this gem: “People who collect the money might dip into the pot.” Sheryl Gedling was admirably honest when she opposed the motion on behalf of the NEC: “It is irresponsible to promise members that we can support them the length of time it would take to win this dispute. The government would find the money to sit it out.”
I think it is fair to say that Francis Maude and Vince Cable will not be losing too many sleepless nights fretting over the pensions dispute right now.
Political strategy
While conference was strangely apolitical, it has to be said that PCS is one of the few unions that have at least tried to put forward a more political strategy. In 2005, PCS voted to establish a “political fund” that would allow it to intervene in “and between” elections. As one of the unions not affiliated to the Labour Party, PCS has clearly found it difficult to exert real pressure on politicians.
In 2007 it first established a ‘check list’ of “our key industrial issues” and put them to parliamentary candidates, publishing their answers online. In June 2012, the union will conduct a ballot to ask members whether they want to expand the remit of the fund so that in “exceptional circumstances” the union “could support candidates or stand them in elections where it would help us to defend jobs, pensions, pay and public services”.[7]
Not exactly a massive step forward after seven years. Clearly, the leadership is dragging its feet. No doubt this is in part to do with the pathetic election results received by left groups, amongst them of course the SPEW-backed Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. It would expose the union’s lack of political influence.
But there also seems to be another reason. In his main speech to conference, comrade Serwotka spoke about the need to “deepen our working relationship with the Unite union”. He repeatedly tried to assure members that “a merger is not on the table”. A report would be drawn up for next year’s conference to map out the “way forward”, but “rest assured: nobody is talking about merging our unions”.
Apart from most members on conference floor. The merger (which obviously is on the cards) was clearly on everybody’s mind and many members spoke against it. Unite’s structures are a lot less democratic than those of the PCS and with its 1.5 million members it clearly would be the one calling the shots. It would, for example, surely retain its affiliation to the Labour Party. In which case, of course, plans to stand PCS candidates would die a very quick death.
tina.becker@weeklyworker.org.uk
Notes
2 . teachers.org.uk/node/15834.
3 . pcs.org.uk/en/news_and_events/pcs_comment/index.cfm/id/08D2FA0A-20B5-4F88-9D69847DE1234826.
4 . ‘Fight for a June strike’ Socialist Worker May 22.
5 . ‘Defiant PCS conference votes for more united pensions strikes’ Socialist Worker June 2.
6 . ‘Bring Loftus to account’ Weekly Worker November 19 2009.