When Labour came to power in July 2024, PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote welcomed an end to what she described as 14 years of “abhorrent, right-wing Tory rule”.
Heathcote, then just five months into her leadership of the union, also warned that the new administration must not be “more of the same in a different shade” and demanded “a government that values its own workforce”.
Ten months later, speaking at the union’s annual conference this month, Heathcote acknowledged that the Keir Starmer had scrapped his predecessor’s plans to slash 66,000 civil service jobs, but said “there are still too many threats to jobs in many areas of government” and warned Labour against “fighting” the civil service.
The following day, CSW asks Heathcote, who was previously the union's president, what has surprised her most about the Labour administration in its first 10 months in power.
“Probably that it’s not better,” she says bluntly, laughing. “On the positive side, there is more engagement than we would ever had had under the Tories, and I think we have to acknowledge that. I meet regularly with the Cabinet Office and Cabinet Office ministers.”
But she says “the devil is in the detail in terms of how much they actually do about the issues we face”.
“They can meet us as much as they like, but if at the same time they’re then making announcements attacking our members or announcing large-scale cuts, then that’s not so helpful,” she adds.
"Ministers can meet us as much as they like, but if at the same time they’re making announcements attacking our members or announcing large-scale cuts, then that’s not so helpful"
Heathcote says the union’s members “are losing faith a little bit” that the Labour administration will be better.
She says the party has made decisions it “didn’t have to make”, including cuts to the winter fuel allowance and benefits, and dropping its commitment to compensate Waspi women for pension losses, which have angered members. Starmer’s recent speech on migration reforms, where he warned that the UK was at risk of becoming an “island of strangers”, has not helped, she added.
Heathcote says she wants Labour to change its approach to the public sector, and stop “trying to appease Reform” – warning that this will hinder the party at the ballot box.
Some of the recent announcements that the union is seeking assurances over include proposals to reduce the numbers of civil servants in London and a new “mutually agreed exits” process.
On the Places for Growth plans, Heathcote says the union wants guarantees from the Cabinet Office around job security, including a guarantee that there will be no compulsory redundancies nor any compulsory relocations.
Concerns about “mutually agreed exits” issue, meanwhile, centre on a lack of detail about how the Cabinet Office intends to implement the policy. Just ahead of our interview, the PCS conference agreed a national campaign strategy for the upcoming year which includes a commitment to “oppose the ‘tap on the shoulder’ method for selecting people to leave the civil service”, calling this a “recipe for discrimination”. The approved motion said exits should be by trade union agreement with “clear protections for workload and public services”.
“Once this conference is out of the way, we'll be in talks with the Cabinet Office about what [the mutually agreed exits policy] actually means, and then we'll be able to take a view about whether we can get some guarantees about what it doesn't mean and some assurances for our members,” Heathcote says.
Heathcote confident about PCS's ability to challenge government after ‘difficult’ year
Just as Starmer will likely be frustrated with his government's progress so far on some of his key priorities for this parliament, Heathcote has had some difficulties in advancing some of the union’s key priorities in her first 15 months as general secretary.
While she won her election in December 2023, her allies in PCS lost their majority on the National Executive Committee just before last year’s conference, with the union’s national campaign suffering from an ensuing internal battle over strategy.
“We're a democratic union and the NEC are elected, the members decide who they want to represent them,” Heathcote explains. “So we have had some difficulties in terms of being able to progress some of the issues we want to move on, particularly around the national campaign. In fact, what's happened this year is that that any genuine progress on the national campaign has been a bit hampered by some internal difficulties within the NEC.”
“The big issues for us are pay, jobs and job security and, to some extent, hybrid working and flexible working. All of those will be high on our agenda"
With her allies regaining their majority at the most recent committee election held earlier this month, Heathcote now believes PCS will be able to push on with its major priorities. In a sign of this, unlike last year, the NEC’s national campaign strategy was comfortably passed by conference delegates.
“The big issues for us are pay, jobs and job security and, to some extent, hybrid working and flexible working,” Heathcote says. “So all of those things will be high on our agenda. And with the NEC that has been elected, I'm hopeful that we can now move on and start tackling those big challenges that we have with the government”.
She adds: “As I say, the engagement from Labour is welcome, it's something we didn't have under the Tories, but that now needs to translate into some genuine steps forward for our members and we'll only do that by being able to unify people and being able to campaign effectively. And you only do that when you can build the union, organise the union and tackle all the issues in front of you.”
60% mandate 'just not deliverable in some departments'
One issue that has remained high on civil servants’ priority list since Labour came to power is the 60% in-office attendance policy, which was instigated by Rishi Sunak’s government in November 2023 and which Starmer has retained.
PCS has held industrial action over hybrid-working policies in some areas, including action short of strike at the Office for National Statistics. So far, this has been limited to a small number of individual disputes.
Why hasn’t dissatisfaction over the 60% in-office mandate led to a more widespread campaign of action? Heathcote says this is because each department has delegated responsibility for how it applies the hybrid working policy, and so some offices simply cannot introduce the target due to space constraints.
“Whilst 60% is something that has had a lot of media coverage, in some departments, it's just not deliverable because they've got rid of so much of their estate"
“Whilst 60% is something that has had a lot of media coverage and has been picked up on as being the position, in some departments, it's just not deliverable because they've got rid of so much of their estate,” Heathcote says.
“We've got the Met Police in dispute at the moment, and [our members] report that the only reason they put the lights on in one of their buildings is so that they can stick to the 60%, but then when people get there, there isn't a desk for them.
“So it's a bit of an ill-thought out strategy in the first place, and it's just not workable in some of the departments where they're trying to enforce it.”
Heathcote says she believes there will continue to be disputes over the issue until the government takes a more flexible approach. She also believes a move towards more flexibility could help the government to deliver some of its strategies, including reducing the Whitehall estate and spreading civil service roles across the country.
On the final day of PCS’s conference, delegates approved a hybrid-working strategy, instructing the union to continue to support current industrial action and its escalation “where necessary”, and to “work towards contractually protected working flexibilities for all members, to safeguard against potential future politicisation of members’ working conditions”.
Keeping up pressure for 'transformational' employment rights bill
The Labour government committed in its manifesto to repealing the strike-busting minimum service level legislation introduced by Sunak's government in 2023, and this is set to come into effect later this year as part of the employment rights bill. The legislation, which is currently being scrutinised in the House of Lords, also includes new workers' rights including more day-one rights at work, such as sick pay, unfair disimissal and flexible working.
"On the face of it, the employment rights bill is transformational," Heathcote says. Her concern now is that parts of the bill may be "watered down" or that the implementation of it may be delayed.
"In the lead up to them being elected, [Labour] talked a lot about how they would work with us and there would be some quick wins, but that's now on a much slower train," she says.
"We want to put pressure on them now to implement what, if fully implemented, will be a transformational situation for our members, whether it's minimum service levels bills, anti-trade union legislation, bereavement leave, or maternity pay. All of that's good, but it's got to now come in and not get watered down."