Weekly Worker 649 Thursday November 16 2006 Subscribe to the Weekly Worker

PCSU left split

Lee Rock, national secretary of the PCSU Socialist Caucus, explains the split in the Left Unity group

As I briefly reported to the CPGB aggregate meeting on November 5, the Socialist Caucus group within the Public and Commercial Services Union has decided to break from the Left Unity group. It is important that activists - not just in the unions, but throughout the left - understand exactly what is happening in the PCSU.

The PCSU general secretary is Mark Serwotka and the national executive committee is dominated by the Socialist Party and its ideas. The union is therefore the only one in the country that is led by those claiming to be revolutionaries. The SP also dominates Left Unity.

Unfortunately the actions of Socialist Party comrades occupying union leadership positions have been anything but those of Marxists. Under the watch of Serwotka and the SP, tens of thousand of jobs have been lost over the last couple of years. At the same time the number of full-time union posts going to Socialist Party members and supporters has increased dramatically.

The SP firmly believes that it needs to win not just the elections to the NEC and various group executives, but they need to have complete control of the unelected bureaucracy as well. And they use this bureaucratic layer not to organise a rank and file fightback, but to demonstrate what ‘good trade unionists’ they are.

Mark Serwotka, the darling of both the SP and Socialist Workers Party (is there any left platform he doesn’t speak on?), is keen to push his credentials as the person leading a ‘militant fighting union’. Both Serwotka and his SP allies consistently refer to the PCSU as leading the way with strike action. The PCSU has ‘delivered’ so many tens of thousands of strike days each year. Whilst this is true, the facts they do not mention only serve to show them up.

Firstly, the PCSU strike days only look good in comparison to an incredibly low level of strike action across the board. Also 200,000 strike days may look impressive, but that was achieved over four days when 50,000 members in the department for work and pensions (DWP) came out for two 48-hour strikes. In other words, hardly a sign of huge levels of militancy. But, more importantly, the union movement should be measuring success not in terms of how many strike days it can deliver - but in terms of making real gains. And this is the test comrade Serwotka and the SP have so clearly failed.

The civil service has seen 50,000 jobs lost in the last two years. New Labour is on target to achieve a 100,000 reduction by 2008. In the DWP alone 20,000 jobs have been cut in the last two years and a dispute has just been settled (by a margin of nine to one on a 25% turnout) following a ‘yes’ recommendation from the SP leadership that accepts not just a worsening of conditions, but the axing of 10,000 more jobs over the next 18 months. This grim picture of cuts is replicated in many other government departments.

The next ‘big action’ called for by the national executive is a ballot for a one-day strike towards the end of January in protest at job losses and redundancies. Which begs the question - why in the DWP was the SP so keen to settle on the basis of an offer that did not deal with job losses at all and only promised ‘consultation’ on potential redundancies?

It should be noted that of the 20,000 jobs slashed only one person was made compulsorily redundant. It should also be noted, though, that in the week in which the leadership was concluding its ballot to accept the employers’ DWP offer, other civil service departments stepped in to issue redundancy notices. It is obvious to all bar the ‘new left bureaucrats’ that when the leadership of a large section of the union caves in so easily, this gives the green light to attacks elsewhere. Serwotka and the Socialist Party have a lot to answer for.

The attack on jobs in the DWP is only the latest major defeat that the present leadership has not only accepted, but dressed up as a “partial victory”. The climbdown on pensions was a huge setback that will return to haunt us. Without even one day of action the leadership accepted a two-tier pension scheme that results in existing civil servants keeping their pension rights - at the expense of all new workers, who will be on a lesser scheme which obliges them to work an extra five years until 65 (unless they are prepared to pay to retire at 60 like existing workers). This dreadful, divisive sell-out was also proclaimed as a “partial victory” after the SP refused to even attempt mobilising the members to fight.

As regards low pay, it is incredible that a union led by so-called Marxists accepts offers that leave tens of thousands of members in poverty. According to the union, a third of civil servants earn less than £14,000 per year. This is a disgrace by any standards. When Serwotka was elected, he stood on a platform of ending low pay. It has certainly worked for him. According to the union financial report his annual salary is about £70,000 - and then he gets a mortgage allowance of £3,000, not to mention the £25,000 payment into his personal pension fund. True, comrade Serwotka pays £1,000 a month from his salary into the campaigns fund, but this still leaves him taking home nearly £5,000 a month, excluding his personal pension. This is more than double the majority of members’ wages and four times more than one third receive.

The SP and SWP are all very reluctant to have this out in the open - Serwotka is their favourite general secretary and they wish to keep him onside. If you do mention such things publicly then the SP and SWP scream that it is a personal attack - conveniently forgetting their own politics on such questions and also the pledges initially made by Serwotka himself. Why Scottish Socialist Party comrades on the NEC meekly accept all this is hard to fathom, considering their own elected representatives take only £25,000 a year from their MSPs’ salaries; ie, the average skilled worker’s wage in Scotland.

It is for these reasons that the PCSU Socialist Caucus has decided to leave Left Unity. Socialist Caucus also believes that Left Unity, which contains within it many good and hard-working activists, is not an organisation that has a democratic culture. There is no possibility of being able to challenge the Socialist Party leadership of Left Unity, and the SP has made it clear it will not tolerate dissenting voices. So on September 9 the AGM of the Socialist Caucus voted to break with Left Unity and explore with other leftwing activists within the union the need to establish an independent left.

We want a membership-led union, championing membership interests. An effective union, strong on policy delivery rather than rhetoric. We do not think we have the luxury of time. The industrial and political attacks from New Labour are taking place at an increasingly vicious level and the activist layer must try to turn things round as quickly as possible.

www.pcssocialistcaucus.org.uk

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