Public and Commercial Services Union

Transcript of Janice Godrich, PCS president addressing national conference. Video playtime 10 minutes 45 seconds.

PCS deputy president Dave Bean; Conference, after what has been a momentous year under her leadership, I'm sure you will give a warm reception as I ask PCS national President Janice Godrich to address PCS 2010 national conference.

(Clapping from delegates)

Thanks colleagues and first of all can I thank Dave for his kind words of introduction. I also want to repeat my welcome to all delegates, visitors and trainee delegates to conference, especially those of you who may be attending your first national event.

Many of you will also be aware that our General Secretary Mark Serwotka is not able to attend conference. I know you'll want to send him our best wishes and I'll be making a further statement prior to the presentation of our annual report.

Conference, we meet against the background of the recent general election and indeed ours is the first conference to meet since the new Tory/Lib Dem coalition took office. It provides an opportunity, not only to assess the likely challenges we will face and also to decide how we will respond.

In many senses, the outcome of the general election marks the end of the phony war. The Tory and Lib Dem coalition has decided that in tackling the deficit in public finances will be their first priority. It is right therefore that our first debate of this years conference will also focus on that issue.

It's perhaps worth reminding ourselves of the scale of the deficit which currently stands at £163 billion and in the increase in public dept a mind boggling £952 billion. It is almost entirely accounted for by the cost of bailing out the banks. We were told it was necessary to borrow these huge sums in order to rescue the banks. That's why it's right to demand the banks pay it back. Politicians however, have tried to redefine the nature of the crisis. First it was the credit crunch, then it became a global economic crisis, then a recession and now apparently, it's public sector debt, and because of that they think we should pay it back. Well their deceit doesn't fool us.

Politicians also try to pretend that somehow the cuts will be painless. They say they could be achieved through efficiency savings that don't threaten frontline services and that will eliminate the deficit while keeping nurses in hospitals and teachers in schools. During the election, the main parties sought to conceal the extent of their spending cuts and tax rises required to implement their plans. In reality, the electorate had to choose between a Tory party that was planning the biggest spending cuts since world war two, or labour and the Lib Dems who were threatening the biggest retrenchment since the 1970's.

As things have become a little clearer over the last few days, there are to be cuts of 6 billion this year and we shouldn't forget that this would be on top of cuts of £11 billion set out in Alastair Darling's vision of previously announced savings of £9 billion cuts to public sector pay in departmental budgets. But even cuts of this scale barely dent the overall deficit. It will require a massive and unprecedented assault on public spending to achieve this.

There are already over 2.5 billion people out of work, yet it's been estimated that spending cuts put between 500,000 and 750,000 public sector workers on the dole. Many parts of Britain are heavily dependent on the public sector to provide employment. In places like Hastings and Worthing in Sussex, nearly every other job is in the public sector. As the Observer pointed out, cuts in towns like these will be a recipe for social disaster, and it won't stop at cuts in services either. Cameron has pledged to sell off state owned assets including large parts of the BBC and the Royal Mail, and no doubt large parts of the Civil Service are being prepared for privatisation.

Our pay and pensions will come under attack. Cameron has echoed calls for public sector pensions to be reformed. Osborne announced plans at the Tory conference to freeze the pay of public sector workers earning more than £18,000. He claims this is the best way to protect our jobs and that we are all in this together and these policies are in the national interest. Well some of are in this more than others. The rich saw their personal fortune rise by over 30% last year, the biggest increase in 20 years. Nearly 10 billion pounds was spent subsidising pensions at the top 1% of taxpayers. No wonder that supplies of luxury goods report a roaring trade in sales of champagne and expensive handbags.

So according to Cameron, Clegg and Osborne, while the pay jobs and pensions of public servants have to be sacrificed in the national interest, pivileged lifestyles of the rich must be left untouched in the same national interest.

Well, we think the politicians need to hear some home truths. It's not right that a society that is as unequal as when Charles Dickens wrote Hard Times that the poor should bail out the rich. Neither is it acceptable that a country where 50% of the workers earn less than £23,500 and 25% earn less than £16,000 that we should pay for the financial crisis.

Conference, this union has a fantastic record for standing up to the interests of its members. We have fought long and hard over the years, over pay, pensions and to prevent compulsory redundancies and of course, we should all take heart from the CSCS campaign. Hugh Lanning, Deputy General Secretary will cover developments in more detail later this morning. Suffice to say, that unlike other unions, and like the pensions campaign, we did not accept managements final offer was the best available. We backed our judgement based on the widest possible consultation with reps and members, that a combination of industrial action, political campaigning and a forceful legal challenge would force the government to shift its position.

Conference, the message from conference this week has to be that this union is not about waving white flags. That also goes for the campaign battles wages in our groups. Please join me for example in congratulation our Land Registry group in their fantastic campaign against job cuts, our members working in the National Gallery in their magnificent struggle to secure the London living wage and for the first time ever in our commercial sector, the successful industrial action taken by Hewlett Packard members, well done to all of you.

(Clapping from delegates)

We need also to step up our campaigning activity and strengthen our organisation like never before. Chris Baugh, Assistant General Secretary will present the organising plan tomorrow, but we should seek to make the most of the successful CSCS campaign by signing up non-members and ensuring we have a named distributor in every workplace and by filling every reps position.

Conference, common misery promotes common struggle. The new government will not merely make itself unpopular it if perseveres with its unprecedented cuts programme. The Daily Mail has already complained that it risks Greek style strikes and protests. Well far be it for us to disappoint the Daily Mail. We need to build on the fantastic work being done at national, regional and local level; to forge unity with our sister unions in order to put us in the best possible position to weather the coming storm.

Conference, the politicians won't allow us an easy ride, Cameron would happily strengthen the anti-union laws to prevent strikes in the public sector. We can also expect attempts to curb facility time. The BA judgement also shows what authority will do to stop us protecting members interests.

Colleagues I want to address one final issue before bringing my remarks to conclusion. The economic crisis has created a political crisis, as reflected in the falling support of labour and the Lib Dems and the tories failure to secure an outright majority. If anything, the unholy alliance between the tories and the Lib Dems has deepened this mistrust. Just before the election, Nick Clegg, in the days when he was forecasting that the Lib Dems would gain more than a hundred seats claimed there was a gulf in values between him and David Cameron. This didn't stop him joining the government. As Groucho Marx said 'these are my principles, if you don't like them, well, I have others'

Labour took Britain into an illegal war in Iraq and they wonder why they lost the election. They presided over an economic system where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer and they wonder why they lost. They promised cuts that were deeper than anything Thatcher introduced. Conference it's no wonder that they lost and they deserved to lose. So if they want to regain the trust of the British people, they need to focus on policies instead of personalities. They should endorse policies that reject the cuts agenda, they should support the employment of more tax staff, to ensure that the rich pay their fair share. They should invest in public services and the infrastructure. They should end the dependancy on the finance structure by creating a million new jobs in green industries.

Colleagues, the chair of our parliamentary group John McDonnell who supports these policies is standing in the Labour leadership election. I'm sure that he will not only have our best wishes, but those of trade unionists who are looking to an end to the neo-liberal policies.

Conference, thank you for listening and I wish you all a very successful conference, thank you.

(Clapping from delegates)