THOUSANDS of trade unionists will gather in Durham this weekend, at what is a pivotal moment for our movement and class. We finally got shot of this rotten Tory government last week and everyone gathered in Durham will be watching what the Labour government does closely because after seeing their living standards plummet for nearly a decade and a half, they’ve been through too much to be let down again.
 
This will be the first Big Meeting to be held with the Tories not in government in 14 years and no-one will be more pleased to see the back of them than PCS members, who work across the Civil Service and its related areas.

The way these workers, the government’s own staff, no less, have been treated, is appalling. They’ve been attacked on every front: pay, pensions, redundancy and job security. It’s been relentless.
 
With those responsible for this disgraceful treatment in Number 10 and across Whitehall having packed up their bags, our members are looking to this Labour government to right those wrongs. That’s why, in the run-up to the election, we produced a PCS charter, which outlines our key demands of an incoming government.
 
Firstly on pay, PCS members have had to endure a convoluted delegated pay system, across over 200 bargaining areas, that drives down wages and entrenches pay inequalities. What our members need is a return to national collective bargaining and fixing this broken pay system should be a top priority for an incoming Labour government.
 
The previous government have made a mess of our members’ pensions too, with everyone overpaying by 2 per cent each month. Not content with throwing retirement plans into disarray, the Tory government had the cheek to ask our members to pay to fix the problem. So, another job in Labour’s in-tray is to secure pensions justice for our members and to carry out an immediate review of the state pension age.
 
It’s not just living standards and pensions that were in the crosshairs, our members’ jobs were as well. Tens of thousands of Civil Service jobs have been threatened with the chop, with plans to reduce the headcount to pre-pandemic levels.

We hope that a Labour government will not only refuse to cut jobs but in fact do the opposite, because the Civil Service needs more resources, not less. Millions of ordinary people rely on the vital public services our members deliver and not investing in these services will fail communities up and down the country.
 
One of the great things about this weekend is the chance for unions to come together to build and grow joint campaigns on areas that cut across the movement. One of those issues is outsourcing, which is a broken model that needs addressing.

Thousands of staff in the Civil Service, predominantly women and people of colour, are employed on inferior contracts to their Civil Service counterparts. This is far from unique to PCS members so let’s build the campaign to put an end to outsourcing and put maximum pressure on the government to make it happen.
 
These demands are by no means a definitive list and are just a starting point. We hope that a Labour government will engage with us on these building blocks as we look ahead to a new political era.

So as we celebrate everything that makes the trade union the marvel that it is this weekend, let’s also demand that those in power transform this country into one that fills the working class with hope and optimism for the future.