Whether as a lay rep or as a senior union official, I know that reasoned argument, carefully marshalled data and evidence have a vital role to play in achieving members’ objectives, but I have also learned the hard way that reason and logic alone do not always deliver results – sometimes you need to back that up with the threat of industrial action.
PCS represents around 200,000 members in the civil service – the vast majority of rank-and-file civil servants delivering vital public services all around the country, day-in and day-out – and we are committed to collective bargaining with the employer.
Like many other public sector workers, civil service workers have suffered real terms losses in pay because of damaging austerity since 2010, and need pay restoration.
Through our campaign of industrial action, last year our members managed to secure a pay deal that more than doubled last year's pay remit, with a £1,500 one-off lump sum, and secured the abandonment of proposed cuts to the civil service compensation scheme.
For the pay packets of our members, that delivered real results – and through collective bargaining we weighted increases to those members at the sharpest end of the cost-of-living crisis.
Last year, the government allowed for a remit of 4.5 to 5%. Our Home Office members, for example, in administrative grades won pay rises of more than double that level, and our executive officer members received 7.2% to 9.3%. At all grades we achieved more through collective bargaining than the government was initially willing to give.
While this wasn’t everything we would have wanted, it is more than would have been achieved had a pay review body ruled within the government’s imposed remit. Our negotiators and members’ industrial action achieved better results.
PCS is an active union. We don’t want the quiet life of outsourcing pay settlements to an independent body that is, in reality, often no such thing. As Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said last year regarding disputes in the NHS: “The pay review body isn't independent and the government pick and choose when to use it.”
In 2023, delegates at the annual conference of the Royal College of Nursing voted to withdraw from their pay review body. It is industrial action and negotiations that led to a better deal for nurses than what government had sought to impose via its pay review body.
In our sector, we want to be negotiating with the senior civil servants and ministers who are responsible for the departments where our members deliver vital services – to improve the delivery of public services, staff retention and development, and our members’ terms and conditions.
Crucial issues like pay coherence and equal pay are major bargaining objectives for us in the civil service. We need strong collective bargaining to resolve these issues as part of pay negotiations too.
It appears the new Labour government recognises this, which is why it has emphasised the benefits of sectoral collective bargaining as part of its New Deal for Working People. As that document says, “Stronger trade unions and collective bargaining will be key to tackling problems of insecurity, inequality, discrimination, enforcement and low pay.”
I look forward to working with the new government to deliver on the commitment of the new Cabinet Office minister who promised to “make being in the civil service a richer, more rewarding experience.”
And as we’ve seen in other sectors, governments can rig or ignore so-called independent pay review bodies. They are no magic bullet. In fact they are often an obstacle to better pay settlements.
We know the real experts on pay are the ones receiving it: our members. We don’t need an independent pay review body to tell us what fair pay is – our members know and we are their voice.
Fran Heathcote is the general secretary of PCS, the civil service’s biggest union