PCS will now seek an £18-per-hour minimum wage for civil servants, up from the £15 per hour it has previously demanded.
The union’s annual conference delegates today backed a motion setting out a new national campaign, which includes the new policy on minimum wage and other demands such as fully consolidated pay rises of at least 10% and a shorter working week without loss of pay.
The motion, passed on day two of the conference, directs PCS's National Executive Committee to “proceed to a ballot by no later than mid-September if there is not satisfactory progress made to meeting” its key demands.
The list of demands also includes:
- Pay restoration for money lost since 2010
- London weighting minimum of £5,000 a year
- Shortening pay scales where they exist, automatic pay progression and no overlap between pay scales
- Return to national bargaining over pay, terms and conditions
- A job-security agreement to protect employment, workload and services including protections against “the increasing threat of AI”
The NEC has also been asked to “oppose the ‘tap on the shoulder’ method for selecting people to leave the civil service”, calling this a “recipe for discrimination”. It says exits should be by trade union agreement with “clear protections for workload and public services”.
The motion warns: “If the Labour government are determined to fight their civil service instead of respecting us, the NEC is instructed to use all available methods to get the union ready for a fight.”
Speaking to the conference yesterday evening, PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said: “Although the prime minister has scrapped Tory plans to slash 66,000 civil service jobs, there are still too many threats to jobs in many areas of government – and we will be fighting to defend jobs, and indeed to expand the civil service where we can make that case.”
She also warned of the need to fight against the “false divide that has been brought up again recently – between the back office and the front line”.
“Whether it’s in the NHS, the police, the courts or the core civil service – the front line cannot do its job without the back office,” she said.
“Just to be clear for any ministers or journalists listening: if you cut the back office, you damage the front line.”
Heathcote also spoke about how the union's relationship with the government has changed since last year’s election.
“We have to be honest in our assessment of the new government – both the positive and the negative,” she said. “On the one hand, there is a level of engagement and negotiation that simply did not exist at all under the last Conservative government.
“As a result, we have secured agreement to protect the Civil Service Compensation Scheme and won an above-inflation pay rise for our members. But if the government continues to attack working class communities, it will lose the support of working class people, and it will deserve to.”
“When you attack pensioners, attack disabled people, and attack workers’ jobs or pay, then don’t be surprised if they don’t then turn out to vote for you.
She said the government “must learn that lesson, scrap cuts to public services, scrap cuts to the winter fuel allowance and disability benefits, and invest properly in public sector jobs, pay and services”.