Public and Commercial Services Union

The 'Make Your Vote Count' (MYVC) campaign has been run by PCS in elections since 2007 and provides a means whereby our members can exert pressure on candidates seeking political office in relation to the union's key concerns, such as jobs, pay and privatisation, as well as playing a part in our campaign against the far right.

The Make Your Vote Count campaign challenges your representatives and asks them to make a stand for public services. Image: Gillian Blease.

In the 2007 Welsh Assembly elections, our members questioned 60 candidates about their views and won support from all the major parties for our opposition to regional pay. In the 2008 local elections, we questioned 73 candidates standing for Welsh councils, the vast majority of whom were supportive of the union's views.

Make Your Vote Count 2010

The government will soon be calling a general election, which has to take place by 3 June 2010 at the latest. This will be the most important opportunity yet for our Make Your Vote Count campaign, as the politicians elected will have a direct say over the departments and agencies which employ a majority of PCS members. We are therefore particularly keen to involve as many people as possible in this year's campaign.

We are aiming to ask every candidate standing in the general election, excluding far right parties, to support our five pledges. They are:

1. I pledge to work to ensure that public services are properly resourced and delivered by the public sector and that there are no further local office closures, public sector job cuts or privatisations.
2. I pledge to support measures aimed at closing the UK tax gap, including recruiting HMRC staff and ensuring tax loopholes are closed.
3. I pledge to support civil service national pay bargaining and to press the government to offer pay increases to public sector workers at least in line with inflation.
4. I pledge to urge the government to honour the 2005 commitment on public sector pensions and to defend the rights of existing members of the civil service compensation scheme.
5. I pledge to campaign to ensure any changes to public services are only made after proper equality impact assessments have been conducted and their findings implemented.

Forty parliamentary constituencies will be contested in Wales. Most of these contain several hundred PCS members and we want as many of these members as possible to contact the candidates standing in their area to ask them to sign up to our five pledges. 

PCS in Wales will also be focusing on around five key target seats that have a high concentration of PCS members, office closures, or key politicians standing for election.

In each of these target seats we are aiming to not only challenge the candidates by letter/e-mail but also invite them to attend a question time meeting where members can grill them on the issues of concern to them, before they decide who to vote for.

PCS branches across Wales are now appointing MYVC campaign co-ordinators,  identifying key local issues for us highlight in the campaign (e.g. job cuts, office closures, relocation, pay, privatisation, cuts in public services), monitoring any local activity by the racist British National Party (BNP) and collecting contact details for members who want to be involved in the campaign.

We need to encourage every member of PCS, as well as our friends and families, to register to vote and to take part - this is the only way we can maximise our union’s influence, help to elect politicians who value and support public services, and stop the growth in electoral support for the BNP.

For information about MYVC, please email Darren Williams - darrenw@pcs.org.uk or Siân Boyles - sianbo@pcs.org.uk or call 02920 666363.