By David Niven, PCS member, Defra North West & Cumbria Branch
PCS is the largest union representing workers across national government bodies such as the civil service and Non Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs), as well as workers in the private sector who work on outsourced government contracts.
May is an important month in the PCS calendar because this is when the results of our annual National Executive Committee (NEC) elections are announced and when our Annual Delegate Conference (ADC) takes place in Brighton.
In this first of two articles I will focus on the results of this year’s NEC elections and our conference policy for 2026 in relation to our National Campaign on pay and jobs.
The socialist ‘Coalition For Change’ alliance wins a decisive majority on the NEC
The results of the NEC elections were announced in the week leading up to Annual Delegate Conference.
The Coalition For Change (CFC) which is an electoral alliance consisting of the Broad Left Network, the Independent Left, and the Alliance for Change and Rank & File groupings within Revenue & Customs, won 21 of the 35 annually elected lay member positions on this body, including the President, Deputy President and 2 out of the 3 Vice President positions.
Rachel Heemskerk, a supporter of Left Horizons, was elected to one of the Vice President positions.
It is only the second time that the Left Unity faction (in alliance with the PCS Democrats) has lost control of the NEC since they defeated the corrupt, right wing, ‘Moderates’ in 2003. The other time was two years ago in 2024/25.
Turnout was unfortunately very low again at 6.4%, indicating that the voting in these elections doesn’t currently extend too far beyond the PCS activist base.
Left Unity controlled NEC failed to implement conference policy on pay and jobs in 2025
There may be more than one reason for the CFC’s decisive victory this year, however a significant factor was the failure of last year’s Left Unity controlled NEC to actively implement 2025 conference policy in relation to the PCS National Campaign on pay and jobs.
That policy, supported by a large majority of last year’s conference delegates, included a clear instruction to the NEC to ‘build a campaign on the widest possible basis’ around a 2025 pay claim focused on a 10% pay award underpinned by a minimum £18 per hour wage, and to proceed to a national industrial action ballot by mid-September if the Government had not made sufficient movement towards meeting our demands.
However, for almost 3 months following conference, the NEC did next to nothing to mobilise members in support of these demands in preparation for a potential ballot. Eventually the NEC finally got round to holding consultation meetings with branches in late August and September 2025.
But instead of trying to mobilise members in support of these demands and for moving to ballot, if necessary, Left Unity supporting NEC speakers at these members’ meetings often did the opposite by actively discouraging members from supporting these aims.
For example, at a well attended meeting of over 100 members in my Defra North West & Cumbria Branch, 18 members made contributions in support of moving to a ballot for strike action. The only person at the meeting who spoke against this was the NEC speaker!
These deliberate actions to frustrate conference policy by the Left Unity majority on the NEC resulted in insufficient numbers of members being mobilised in support of our demands on pay and jobs.
Many activists across PCS were left furious at Left Unity’s sabotage of conference policy and our National Campaign on pay and jobs.
Conference Policy must be respected
The CFC are now in a stronger position than they were when they won a narrow majority on the NEC two years ago.
In 2024 they did not win the Presidency, nor did they have a two thirds majority meaning that the Left Unity President, Martin Cavanagh, was able to (and did) rule out of order, on spurious grounds, many motions submitted by the CFC majority for discussion at NEC meetings. He was able to do this under PCS rules which require a two thirds majority to overturn a Presidential ruling.
This was used as a pre-meditated tactic by the Left Unity minority on the NEC to frustrate the will of the CFC majority. It was an outrageous attack on PCS democracy!
Now after the 2026 NEC elections, the CFC has the Presidency, so they don’t have to worry about their motions being ruled out of order on spurious grounds.
However, Left Unity still has the General Secretary position (Fran Heathcoate) which is the senior full time officer within PCS and is elected every 5 years by members.
So, based on what we saw 2 years ago there is likely to be a power struggle between the CFC majority on the NEC on the one hand and the Left Unity General Secretary, backed up by the Left Unity minority on the NEC and sections of the PCS bureaucracy, on the other. Each pointing to their separate electoral mandate from members.
If, as we would expect, this power struggle transpires it needs to be stated clearly that PCS endeavours to be a member led union. And its rules reflect this by confirming that Annual Delegate Conference is the principal policy making body of the union, and that between conferences it is the NEC which is the principal governing body in PCS. Therefore the General Secretary should act in line with decisions taken by the NEC throughout this coming year.
General Secretary fails to reference conference policy on pay and jobs
Major concerns have already been raised by the fact that the General Secretary did not make any reference whatsoever to the 2026 PCS policy on pay and jobs, that was decided by conference only two days earlier, when she sent an email to all PCS members about the 2026 civil service pay remit following its publication on 21st May.
The 2026 conference policy, similar to that from 2025, instructs the NEC to submit a national claim on pay and related issues covering members in the civil service and NDPBs, which includes the following:
- A fully consolidated 10% pay award
- An £18 per hour minimum wage
- A job security agreement
- 35 days annual leave
- A 4 day week with no loss of pay
- Insourcing of privatised government functions in line with Labour’s manifesto commitment
The policy also instructs the NEC to mobilise members around these demands, starting immediately after conference, and to move to a national strike ballot by the end of September if insufficient progress is made in talks.
Instead, in her email to all PCS members, the General Secretary focused almost entirely on presenting a positive view on civil service pay since the Labour government came to office in 2024, making the following points:
- An above inflation civil service pay remit of 3.5% for 2026. The CPI rate of inflation of 2.8% for April 2026 was quoted in comparison by the General Secretary instead of the CPIH or RPI rates which were both 3.0%
- That cumulative inflation over the period covered by the two civil service pay rounds since the Labour government came to office in 2024 has been 5.99% (CPI) whereas cumulative average pay increases have been 8.89%.
However the General Secretary didn’t mention that when the 5% pay award was made by the new Labour government in 2024, which was our first above inflation pay award in over 14 years, PCS had live strike mandates hanging over the government in a number of civil service and NDPB employer areas. She should also have recalled that 3% of that pay award was funded from existing departmental budgets which subsequently resulted in job cuts.
The General Secretary also failed to reference data contained in a ‘PCS Pay Research Report’ published in 2024, which showed that between 2010 and 2023 median annual pay at the Administrative Officer (AO) grade had reduced in real terms value by between 15% and 26%, and at the Executive Officer (EO) grade by between 22% and 32% over the same period.
The first meeting of the incoming NEC will take place on 29th May and I’m sure that the General Secretary’s failure to mention the 2026 PCS policy on pay and jobs in her email to members will be discussed!
In the weeks and months ahead it is imperative that all PCS reps and full time officers get behind our fighting conference policy on pay and jobs.
In the second part of my article I will go into more detail on some of the other policies agreed at PCS Annual Delegate Conference.
