Left Foot Forward spoke to the PCS general secretary at TUC Congress
Trade unionists are gathering in Brighton this week for the annual TUC Congress. Fran Heathcote is the general secretary of the PCS union, which represents civil servants across the UK.
Left Foot Forward spoke to Heathcote at Congress about the changes PCS is seeking to secure for its members from the new Labour Government.
Collective bargaining was top of the list: “So really, what we want is a proper engagement with the new government, including the right to collective bargaining. Under the Tories, for the last 14 or so years, there was no collective bargaining, whether that be about pay or about jobs, terms and conditions,” she said.
Alongside this, unsurprisingly, Heathcote told Left Foot Forward that one of the big issues that PCS will be pushing the new government on is pay. Heathcote said that PCS will be pushing for both inflationary pay rises, but also pay restoration after more than a decade of austerity which has suppressed wages for public sector workers.
She told Left Foot Forward: “I think the obvious issue is low pay. It’s a nonsense that tens of thousands of civil servants – let that sink in, that’s government workers – are in receipt of Universal Credit, working two or three jobs to get by, or having to have an enforced uplift every April because their wages fall below the minimum wage. So just for the government to remain within the law, our members have to have a pay increase every year.
“So they really need to sort out what is a broken pay system, and we are clearly making demands around inflationary pay rises as you’d expect. But there has to be an element of restoration as well, there has to be an element of catching up on 14 years where civil servants’ pay has just been held back.”
So far, both the prime minister Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have sought to make clear that the new government isn’t going to be ramping up public spending. Heathcote acknowledges this, telling Left Foot Forward: “Well, we hope for the best and prepare for the worst. That’s the saying, isn’t it.
“Rachel Reeves has said there will be difficult decisions to make. And clearly, those difficult decisions always seem to impact the lowest paid and most vulnerable. There are some other difficult decisions that could be taken, like taxing the super rich”.
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
Image credit: Steve Eason – Creative Commons
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