Building our union is the key to facing the challenges ahead

If delegates do just one thing after leaving this year’s PCS conference, it should be to recruit a new member to the union, said general secretary Fran Heathcote as she moved the annual report to kick off our policymaking ‘parliament’ in Brighton.

Building and strengthening PCS in our workplaces is vital for keeping up the winning work being done for members and embracing the many challenges and opportunities ahead, she said.

Fran welcomed delegates and congratulated the incoming national executive committee (NEC), paying special tribute to Martin Cavanagh – re-elected as national president – for playing a “vital role in upholding the constitution of our union” over the past year.

Her address covered a broad range of topics affecting members, from PCS successes in the courts and industrial matters, to the rise of the far right and Reform and the failings of the UK Labour government, to the Employment Rights Bill and international issues.

Fran said honesty was needed when assessing Labour’s performance.

A “level of engagement and negotiation that simply did not exist at all under the last Conservative government” has yielded an agreement to protect the long-threatened Civil Service Compensation Scheme, an above-inflation pay rise in 2024/25, and confirmation that the Tories’ headcount target of 66,000 job cuts in the civil service is scrapped.

“But we all know there are threats to jobs in many areas of government – and we will be fighting to defend jobs, and indeed to expand the civil service where we can make that case,” said Fran.

Two “highly significant” legal victories were highlighted, including our Supreme Court win in November, which ended a decade-long fight over the Tories’ unlawful scrapping of check-off.

She paid tribute to everyone who took part in the fightback against that attempt to bankrupt PCS. Despite the magnificent effort to convert members to paying subs by direct debit, Fran said “we have to recognise that the end of check-off has had a lasting impact on our membership density.”

“If you look at the unions that have secured the best pay deals in recent years, it is those with the highest density in their sectors. So our responsibility is to rebuild our union, recruiting workers in our workplaces to make us the strongest we can be. That’s a responsibility on every one of us.”

Fran also referred to the damage done last year by the decision to maintain the national strike levy, with some members leaving and recruitment becoming harder.

“I’m glad that earlier this year, the NEC finally voted to back my call to pause the levy. The incoming NEC will have to rebuild trust,” she said.

The union’s other court victory was over the Rwanda deportation scheme – a “vile policy” that was finally declared dead and buried when the Tories were voted out.

However, Fran told delegates, “what is still very much alive is the racist scapegoating of migrants and asylum seekers by leading politicians” and PCS would stay at the forefront of our movement in challenging the hate and division of the far right.

“Anything that divides working class people weakens us… That’s why we must always, all of us, challenge racism, misogyny, homophobia or any other form of hate – because our job, our reason for existing, is to unite working class people.”

She said that also applies to our trans members, and that PCS is carefully assessing the recent Supreme Court judgement.

“Your enemy is not the trans person, the disabled person or the refugee, but the boss who drives down your pay or threatens your job; the minister who cuts public services,” said Fran.

On PCS’s anti-racism anti-fascism (ARAF) work, and with the threat of the far right now boosted with the rise of Reform UK, Fran said we have to be clear with members that the party “offers no solutions, just scapegoats” and is not on the side of workers.

The only reason that Reform is riding high is due to the failures of this Labour government, she said, citing issues such as cuts to Winter Fuel Payments and disability benefits.

The union’s Tax Justice campaign is therefore being relaunched, to show there is an alternative to cuts and austerity.

Before the election, Labour promised the “biggest wave of insourcing in a generation”. Fran paid tribute to our outsourced members in G4S, OCS and ISS who have been on strike over pay, sick pay and other terms and conditions.

Their sustained action “embarrassed ministers into taking responsibility – and sitting down with us and these outsourcing giants to try to hammer out a deal,” she said.

Fran also applauded members taking a stand against arbitrary office attendance mandates, including at the ONS, Land Registry, and Met Police.

“If the government wants to save money on expensive London offices, then relax the office attendance mandate.”

She also lamented the government’s resistance to a reduced working week, contrasting it with the approach of the Scottish Government, which has held a four-day week pilot and reduced the working week.

“Too often the government in Westminster seems paralysed by what the reaction of the Daily Mail might be. But it will never be enough. The bigotry of the right-wing press and Reform needs to be confronted and defeated, not pandered to.”

Fran reminded delegates that migrant workers are our colleagues, neighbours and friends, and people on whom we often depend for services: “They are not strangers, they are not a burden.”

She said our solidarity does not stop at our own borders, which is why we “stand with the people of Palestine facing a genocidal onslaught from Israel” and “stand squarely with the people of Ukraine against Russian invasion and occupation”.

She said there are “huge challenges” in the year ahead: on insourcing, jobs and pay – but opportunities too.

“And if any union can meet those challenges, and seize those opportunities, it is this union, this membership, this conference.”