THE STUC meets at what is a pivotal moment for our movement and our class.

In a general election year, as we witness the death throes of a failing Conservative government, operating a scorched-earth policy, while simultaneously still trying to hang on to power, we need bold and radical ideas now more than ever, and it is so important that we work with as much solidarity as we can muster to build a vision of a real alternative. An alternative that millions of ordinary people are crying out for.

Fourteen years of austerity, a global pandemic and a catastrophic cost-of-living crisis have all had a crippling impact on the working class and they’ve exposed a fundamentally flawed economic model.

Living standards are still plummeting, thousands still sleep rough on the streets and millions of children still are going to bed hungry. It simply cannot go on like this and that’s why we need to work together to build radical change. Nowhere is the need for that change more evident than on the issue of pay.  

The strike wave hasn’t really gone away, with many unions now considering, balloting or reballoting for action. My union, PCS, is balloting right now. PCS members are sadly all too familiar with the issue of low pay.

These are members who play a vital role to keep the country running by providing essential services that the public rely on. During the pandemic, they went above and beyond, often at risk to their own safety. That dedication to public service has been rewarded with year after year of below-inflation pay rises. A story of decline four decades in the making.  

Civil Service wages are lower now than they were in 1975 when Harold Wilson was prime minister. From our research, we now know that Civil Service wages were 5 per cent above average in the 1970s and ’80s but are now 10 per cent below average. It gets worse though, because PCS members have been hit with a double whammy.

The real-terms wage gains that we saw across the whole labour market were higher than those experienced in the Civil Service. After the financial crash in 2008, the wage drop was more severe in the Civil Service than in the rest of the labour market. So when times were good PCS members didn’t feel the full benefit and when times were bad, they felt it more severely than others.

The cost-of-living crisis has shamefully exposed the government for being a minimum-wage employer, with our members’ pay unable to keep pace with even just the basics.

A recent survey of our members found that 40,000 civil servants are using foodbanks and 30,000 are skipping meals. These are government employees. For the government to treat its own workers this way is a national disgrace. It’s unfair, our members are incredibly angry and are determined to do something about it.  

Last year, during our national campaign of strike action, we drew historic concessions from the government on pay. As a result of our members sticking up for themselves and saying enough is enough, the government more than doubled the Civil Service pay remit, in an unprecedented step.  

Despite these gains, though, we’ve always been clear that if our members were still being let down, we wouldn’t hesitate to ballot again. We’re halfway through that ballot now, and I have every confidence we’ll smash the turnout threshold and take another step towards winning again for our members.

And while Scottish sector members are not included in this ballot, having gained valuable concessions on pay during their own pay campaign, we are continuing to push the SNP government for improvements to their terms and conditions, for all workers in Scotland.

Our members know full well just how much they need a pay rise, a recent public accounts select committee report agrees with them. The report calls on the government to properly address low pay in the Civil Service, but we’re not holding our breath. 

Any incoming government, including the Labour Party, needs to take notice too. If, as predicted, they form the UK government before the year is out, fixing the broken pay model in the Civil Service, and indeed across the public sector, should be a priority, and that starts with proper collective bargaining.

At present, pay negotiations for PCS members in the UK Civil Service take place across over 200 bargaining areas, in a system they call delegation. It’s a totally broken system that entrenched low pay, and we’re calling on an incoming Labour government to fix it.  

While they are at it, they can get rid of all the anti-union legislation, which is stopping unions from protecting their members from bad bosses and low pay, at the same time.  

Public-sector workers have been treated shamefully for too long. They have been through too much for them to be let down again.  

We will continue organising in our workplaces and in our communities, as we always have always done. We will work with anyone who is prepared to work with us, to build the biggest coalition of resistance possible, whether it is the current Westminster government that we are up against, or an incoming Labour government.  

With the campaigns and challenges facing us all, solidarity will certainly need to be more than just a slogan. I’ll be seeing you on the picket lines.

Fran Heathcote is general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union.