General Secretary of PCS Fran Heathcote sets out the union’s bargaining position as the new government comes to power.

Since Labour was elected to government in July after fourteen years of Tory misery, everyone, including PCS members, has been watching eagerly. For nearly a decade and a half, living standards have plummeted and the working class is looking to this new government to right that wrong.

It’s important to reflect on and indeed celebrate seeing the back of the Conservatives after so many years in power. The cruelty and suffering they inflicted should never be forgotten: foodbank use soared to unprecedented levels; we saw a return of rickets in our children, a Victorian-era disease borne out of extreme poverty; and the country has become gripped by the worst homelessness crisis in the developed world.

I could go on, but instead I want to look ahead to what demands our movement should be making, why they should be made, and how we can achieve them – starting with PCS members, who work across the UK civil service and deliver essential public services. No one will be more pleased to see the back of the Tories than them, because the way these workers – the government’s own staff – have been treated is appalling. They’ve faced a relentless attack on every front: pay, pensions, redundancy and job security. Not only that, but the union’s ability to fight back – despite its best efforts – has been severely curtailed thanks to years of harsher and harsher trade union legislation.

The inevitable consequence of all of this is that PCS members are struggling to make ends meet. I’ve seen and heard harrowing testimony from members who cannot afford the basics that they and their families need to live on. 40,000 civil servants are using foodbanks and 30,000 are skipping meals. These are startling figures.

That’s why it must be a top priority for the government to fix the broken pay model in the UK civil service. Pay is a fundamental issue for our members, who endure a convoluted, delegated pay system. At the moment, pay negotiations take place across a staggering 200-plus bargaining areas. It’s a disastrous system that drives down wages and entrenches pay inequalities. Civil service wages are lower now than they were in 1975, and this has resulted in a cumulative loss of pay of between £13,000 and £16,000. And although progress has been made on the gender pay gap, it is still only slightly below double figures at 9.1%. The outlook for disabled civil servants is more alarming, with the disability pay gap standing at 8.4% and widening over time. This is why we’re calling for the establishment of proper collective bargaining machinery on pay at the UK level for the civil service, and this would include a single pay spine for all workers.

There has been some progress on pay so far, with the civil service pay remit in July awarding civil servants a 5% pay rise. This is a step in the right direction, but it has become clear that some public sector workers have fared better than others. There is no justification for civil servants getting less than other public sector workers and unions need to form a united front to ensure that workers are not pitted against each other. It’s also disappointing that no efforts have yet been made to address the deep structural problems of the pay system in the civil service. The change in tone is welcome, but we want immediate talks to address this fundamental issue for our members.

Elsewhere, the previous government made a mess of PCS members’ pensions too, with everyone overpaying by 2% each month. Not content with throwing retirement plans into disarray, the Tory government had the cheek to ask members to pay to fix the problem. So, another job in Labour’s in-tray is to secure pensions justice for PCS 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. 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 refuse to cut jobs and do the opposite. 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 final issue to reflect on is the scourge of outsourcing in the civil service. The outsourced workforce of cleaners, caterers, porters and receptionists are predominantly people of colour, and many of them are women. They welcome, serve food, and clean up after some of the most powerful people in the country and indeed the world, but because their work is outsourced, they’re employed on contracts with pay and terms and conditions that are inferior to their civil service employed counterparts.

Just like the broken pay model, outsourcing is a key driver of inequalities, particularly race and gender. It institutionalises racism, not just in the civil service but across the public and private sectors. It’s where class and race intersect, with Black workers being paid less and enduring worse terms and conditions than those employed directly.

At PCS, we have a history of these outsourced workers taking a stand and fighting back. G4S staff working at DWP sites are on strike at the moment, and recently a strike of ISS workers at the new net zero department won significant concessions from the employer.

Outsourcing is a major test for the new government. PCS members have seen Labour’s promise “to carry out the largest wave of insourcing in a generation”. Let’s hope it’s a pledge they stick to because, to paraphrase Keir Starmer, what the people of this country need isn’t slogans, it’s a government that can change lives.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of issues but merely a starting point. These ones are key because they cut across the whole movement. Working together to achieve our goals is what we should all be aiming for. That starts with unions having a firm, united position and red lines, and not deviating from them. We need to ensure unions aren’t picked off one by one, which weakens our joint negotiating strength and ultimately results in concessions that fall short of what’s required.

Meanwhile, our movement can only secure the change we’re demanding if unions are unshackled and given the ability to properly negotiate on behalf of their members. Labour must repeal all anti-union legislation as a bare minimum and, beyond that, introduce a programme of bold and radical reform of union rights.

It’s incumbent on our movement that we apply maximum pressure on the Labour government to engage and build with us as we look ahead to a new political era. After being treated with such disdain for so long, our members and the movement can’t be let down again.

Fran Heathcote is General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, the UK’s largest civil service union with around 190,000 members.