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Protecting public services

Motion A8 was carried

NEC Attitude: support

Conference re-affirms PCS opposition to the cuts made in the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 that will reduce public spending by £30 billion in 2010/2011, damaging services that people will need more than ever.

Conference rejects the propaganda campaign whipped in the media by the government and opposition parties attacking public service workers and demanding spending cuts on an unprecedented scale. Conference agrees that cuts in state spending, like wage cuts, can only act to further depress the economy and risk a ruinous deflationary spiral.

Conference therefore resolves to oppose Treasury plans, announced in the Pre-Budget Report, to raise revenue in the short term by selling off assets and services including:

  • Defence Storage and Distribution Agency;
  • Forestry Commission;
  • Land Registry;
  • Met Office;
  • National Offender Management Service;
  • Ordnance Survey;
  • QEII Conference Centre;
  • Royal Mint
  • Oil and Pipeline Agency

Conference notes that there are further privatisation threats in other areas in addition to those specified in the Pre-Budget Report. Conference further notes that the union has had success in campaigns against previous privatisations, including the NHS Pensions Agency.

Conference instructs the NEC:

1. To continue to develop our existing campaign work against privatisation by coordinating our campaigning and negotiating activities across the areas affected, including consideration of industrial action if appropriate;

2. To co-ordinate our campaign work to defend spending on services and call for measures to stimulate the economy through state investment;

3. To offer full support to other unions fighting privatisation, such as the CWU in their fight against the privatisation of Royal Mail;

4. To make this area of work central to the Make Your Vote Count Campaign.

Motion A9 was carried

NEC Attitude: support

That this NDC condemns the decision to privatise the single enforcement help line for workers to report abuses of employment rights. The NEC is instructed to campaign for this work to be brought back into the public sector within the civil service.

Conference also deplores the missed opportunity of the report of the Vulnerable Workers Enforcement Forum, where the Government response was merely to set up a single help line. The NEC is instructed to campaign for additional jobs to be created within the civil service to assist workers with the enforcement of their employment rights, and for officers to have sufficient powers to secure compliance over a wide range of rights, for instance to have powers to secure arrears of holiday pay for workers as well as arrears of national minimum wage.

The NEC is instructed to seek the honouring of Gordon Brown's pledge of a 50% increase in resources for NMW compliance so that there is a permanent increase of at least 50% in the number of NMW compliance officers.

Motion A10 was carried

NEC Attitude: support

Conference notes that the government is promoting inclusion of faith based organisations in the delivery of publicly funded services (eg the Freud report). Religious organisations have important exemptions from the Equality Act 2006, from the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 and from the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003, which allow them to discriminate in various ways, even when working under contract to provide a public service. Users of services delivered by religious organisations have no protection under the Human Rights Act even where such services are publicly funded.

The exemptions from employment equality legislation allow religious employers to discriminate against potential applicants for jobs on grounds of religion or belief and of sexual orientation, and to discriminate against current employees on those same grounds in ways such as barring them from opportunities for promotion or by dismissing them.

These exemptions mean that a faith based organisation can place a higher emphasis on an applicants faith/religious belief than the essential skills and qualifications required for the job and that the Governments drive to increase outsourcing/privatisation may afford little protection under TUPE while religious/faith based organisations are able to exploit the exemptions.

Conference notes the TUC paper “Opposing Workfare and Privatisation: the TUC response to the welfare reform Green Paper” which states that "Public funds should not be used to boost the influence of religious organisations in the public sphere”. There are risks of employment discrimination and discrimination against service users by some faith-based employers. Unions want people to have equality at work and in service delivery, which means that organisations delivering core public services should be impartial and unbiased.

Unfortunately, many religious organisations believe that they are exempted from antidiscrimination legislation for almost any services they provide, and might therefore discriminate even if this proved eventually to be unlawful. There is a very real danger that religious organisations providing employment services may discriminate against staff or clients on the grounds of religion, lifestyle or sexuality.

As far as the TUC is aware, there are no plans to put clauses in contracts for employment services to protect clients and employees from discrimination, no plans to give transferred staff a right to work for a non-religious organisation and no plans to give clients a right to be referred to a non-religious organisation".

Conference instructs the NEC to:

  • continue to support the delivery of public services within the public sector where employees/service users will be covered by equality and human rights legislation
  • oppose the allocation of public funds to any organisation which cannot demonstrate that it is fully committed to policies on employment and service delivery which are totally inclusive and unbiased unless there is a very clear Genuine Occupational Requirement

Motion A11 was remitted

NEC Attitude: remit/oppose

Recent world events have exposed the failure of the capitalist, neo-liberal project to provide a decent standard of living with quality public service provision for all those who need it. Decisions by both British and US Governments to nationalise failing financial institutions has brought the issue of public ownership right back onto the agenda.

Conference welcomes the opportunity for PCS to step up its activity around this issue and notes that there have been some campaigning successes by PCS and other unions in rolling back privatisation initiatives in the past year. However, the marketisation of public services continues to be central to the policies of all Britain's main political parties.

This has been demonstrated by the increasing number of privatisations carried out during New Labours term in office which has impacted on the Civil Service through the job cuts agenda and increasing use of private sector consultants. The results of this have been demonstrated through numerous failed IT projects, the loss of sensitive data and less accountability and security of information held by Government. Too often our members get the blame for this in the public Press.

Conference welcomes the work done so far by the PCS NEC, including a national protocol agreement to provide some protection to any of our members whose work is contracted out.

This ADC instructs the NEC to step up our anti-privatisation work by:

  • Increased activity with other unions in Public Services NOT Private Profit, and building links with local campaigning community and user Groups
  • Activities and public meetings called by local areas/branches in support of public ownership, highlighting the failures of privatisation of civil service work
  • Encourage support, by all practical means, for candidates who contest elections on an explicit defence of public services platform
  • To call for the bringing back in house of already privatised areas such as Security, Cleaning and other support services.
  • Use the experience of our Commercial Sector members to highlight the problems of privatisation in practice.
  • Produce material for members and activists covering these issues.

(E marked motion associated with lead motion E205-E217)

Motion A12 was remitted

NEC Attitude: remit/oppose

That this NDC notes the current position following Work Force Change in HMRC as being that there are members located in offices earmarked for closure who have been declared pre-surplus with no HMRC offices within reasonable daily travel.

In addition there are members who are located in areas where other Government departments are located for which a transfer could be an option.

The NEC are instructed to open negotiations with the Government to ensure that any member who voluntarily transfers to another Government department suffers no detriment in terms and conditions following the transfer to include protection of pension rights and flexible working hours.

The NEC are also instructed to negotiate to ensure that any member transferred to a department where the pay scale for their grade is at a lower rate, maintains their current annual rate of pay at the time of transfer and also gains any pay rise and increments from their new employer.

Motion A14 was carried

NEC Attitude: support

Conference notes with concern the continued encroachment of private companies in the MoD. Conference reiterates the position that public sector jobs should be performed by the public sector, however Conference has noticed a more insidious side to this.

For the sake of this motion Conference will use the example of the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency (SPVA) but feel that this situation may be a wider problem.

Conference believes in the principle that Government Bodies should be politically neutral and believes that this cannot be the case if the policy of that body is decided by a private company.

Conference understands that the company EDS has seats upon the SPVA Management Group, thus the private company has a direct impact upon policy and direction.

Conference is aware that the in-house staff attitude survey team, from the old Veterans Agency, will not be able to design and carry out future surveys as EDS would not like it and that this means EDS have forced an out-sourcing. Conference notes that, in VA, the staff attitude survey was fully consulted upon and many questions were provided by the TUS including those which tied in with HSE stress surveys.

Conference understands that the former-Chief Executive of SPVA referred to the EDS staff as his staff - despite the fact that they did not work for him.

Conference believes that if this is happening in SPVA it must be happening elsewhere.

Conference calls on the incoming NEC to approach the PCS Parliamentary Group and other suitable bodies in order to call a full Parliamentary Enquiry into the amount of influence private companies have over (supposedly neutral) civil service policy, beginning with SPVA, with a view to removing any influence that could effect Civil Service neutrality.

Motion A16 was carried

NEC Attitude: support

Conference is aware of the enormous cuts in the Justice Sector. This includes the £1billion savings in the MOJ, the forthcoming closure of at least 100 court offices, a cut in 10,000 jobs as well as the pernicious privatisation of the prisons and systematic closure of police stations. It should also be noted that the earnings, below inflation, of these public sector workers along with regional pay in the ministry of Justice will heavily impede the vital service delivery. Undoubtedly, such measures will hardly prevent rising crime at a time of increasing poverty and unemployment.

Therefore, we instruct the NEC to implement the following measures:

  • to encourage a strong communication network in the MOJ, the Met Police, the Home Office, the CPS and other Government Bodies associated with the Justice Sector.
  • To create a strong network liaison officer with other trade unions in the Justice Sector such as the POA, NAPO, Prospect, FDA and possibly the Police Federation.
  • To ask all trade unions in the Justice Sector to campaign simultaneously against these baleful cuts.
  • To continue lobbying MPs and other representatives in assemblies, as well as regional and local authorities.

(E marked motions associated with lead motion E220-E227)

Guillotined: A17, A18, A19