Allow me to explain the definition of bollocks. It goes like this. On 13th April, my old union, the PCS, reveals that general secretary Mark Serwotka is going to meet with officials at the Cabinet Office the next day. Given that one function of said office is to deal with civil service pay, it was pretty obvious why. On 14th April, PCS reports that the government has made no offer to improve last year’s 2% pay increase and has offered 4.5% for this year. Serwotka is livid. The offer is “not enough” and “unacceptable”. With inflation currently running at 10.4%, he’s right. The union’s campaign started the best part of a year ago and to date, despite two national one day strikes and targeted local action where members are given full pay to go on strike, it has achieved nothing. I believe this campaign, as with almost every campaign the union launches into under its ultra left leadership, is doomed. But more about that later. Let’s deal with Serwotka and his bollocks, first.
Serwotka says this:”What we have been offered for 2023 is not enough but it is, for the first time, in line with what other public sector workers have been offered and have rejected. That we were offered it in the first place is only because of our national campaign and our incredibly well-supported strike action. Our strikes have moved the government, but nowhere near far enough.” What we have here is opinion dressed up as fact. There is no evidence which suggests that Rishi Sunak’s government has caved in and given a much higher award than it would otherwise had done if civil servants hadn’t taken strike action. But it suits Serwotka to let people think the union has somehow achieved some kind of limited victory because the union is once again balloting members for further action. Make them believe that the loss of two days pay has already scared the living daylights out of the government and they’ll vote for more strikes. Doubtless some folk will vote for more strikes on that basis which I put to you, dear reader, is a very dishonest course of action. And it’s even worse than that.
The PCS supermarket trolley full of demands has not been met in any way. The union wanted a refund of 2% of pension funds that they say were overpaid. They want improved redundancy terms. They were demanding 35 days annual leave per year and an unspecified cut in working hours with no loss of pay, but these two demands appear to have been quietly shelved. Since the 2% pay increase was imposed, the best part of a year ago, the government hasn’t even met the union, never mind negotiated. This campaign isn’t working. What happens next?
Under trade union laws, unions must re-ballot members from time to time to maintain a legal mandate to call strikes. That’s happening with PCS right now, coincidentally in tandem with the national executive elections and approaching the union’s annual conference. There are three possible outcomes:
- The union accepts the campaign has been lost and they call an end to it.
- Members vote for more of the same sort of strike action that has so far gone nowhere.
- Members vote for an all-out, unpaid indefinite strike.
So, what’s it to be?
That union elections are taking place means no one will advocate calling off the strikes. In any event, PCS campaigns of action don’t formally end. They just fizzle out and die. I suspect that will happen eventually but before I come to outcome two, I’ll deal with the third one, the nuclear option of calling the entire civil service out on strike indefinitely. It’s the favoured course of the hard left but there is not a snowball’s chance in hell of people voting for that. Just forget it. So we come to outcome two.
The current campaign is having little effect on the day to day running of the civil service. Sure there is a bit of hassle in departments like the Passport Office but the government will simply ride it out. There will be the odd one day strike from time to time, preferably to coincide with a bank holiday weekend, like the next PCS effort, but as we discovered in the PCS’s predecessor union CPSA in 1981 and 1987 it is nothing like enough to force the government into a humiliating defeat.
In my view, strike action should only be taken by a trade union when there is a good chance of winning, or at the very least achieving some improvements. You don’t begin a battle you know you are going to lose. At which time, you hear a very fair point of view by union members. “What else can we do? Year upon year, we get a below inflation pay rise. Do we just sit there like nodding dogs and accept every bone that’s thrown down to us?” There’s not an easy answer to this but the honest answer to the last bit is yes. PCS is a union that is run from top to bottom by the hard left. There are three ‘slates’ for this year’s elections and they all represent positions way to the left of Jeremy Corbyn. Maintaining their grip on the levers of power matter more than anything to them. And they will know, deep in their hearts, if they are honest, that at some point there will come a surrender. When it does, it will be someone else’s fault.
All this must be depressing for an ordinary civil servant who wants a better deal with their pay and conditions, not least when the general secretary misleads her or him by pretending the strikes to date have made the slightest difference to ministers’ thinking. Only ministers really know the truth of that, but with this lot in charge, the most right wing government of my lifetime, I’d be staggered if Serwotka’s angry huffing and puffing did anything other than harden the government’s resolve.
My advice for PCS members in the current re-ballot is don’t vote. The union needs at least a 50% turn out to be legitimate, the leaders have a core number of voters who they know will vote for strikes and even voting no could well take the final figure over the 50% required. In other words, even a no vote could be a vote for action.
You may call it defeatism, I call it realism. Einstein was credited with saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” There’s little evidence that he actually did say it, but it’s absolutely right.
Knowing my former colleagues, they are lions led by donkeys. They deserve so much more but with Serwotka and the 57 variety of Trotskyists lined-up behind him, they aren’t going to get it.
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