There now follows an essay about the decline in my union, the PCS. Feel free to fall asleep as you read.
The threat to trade unions by the
government’s decision to end the check-off facility for collecting
subscriptions is very real and is likely, particularly in the case of PCS, to
be extremely damaging, if not fatal.
No one can be in any doubt of the political
motivation behind this decision but we need to be very clear that it will have
little effect on ordinary PCS members who already find themselves being
represented, if that’s the word, by a rag tag and bobtail collection of Toytown
revolutionaries who have already taken the union to the brink of destruction.
While it is undoubtedly true that in many,
often unseen, areas the union carries out much good work for members but on the
national stage it is almost an irrelevance.
Campaign after campaign has faltered and
died, only to be resurrected during the annual AGM and election season before
being allowed to falter and die, again.
After last year’s hopeless campaign, which
appeared to start with pensions and pay but ended with a ‘stop the cuts’
slogan, there was a ‘consultation’ period which passed many of us by but
concluded, astonishingly, with the revelation that members still fancy a scrap
with the government.
Whilst there is undoubtedly disillusionment
and even despair among the ranks, I do not detect the will for a fight,
whatever that means.
PCS is inextricably linked with the ultra
left in general and the Socialist Party (Militant to us old codgers) in
particular and we have, in the view of this tired old hack, reached the end of
the road.
The ultra left controls virtually every
aspect of the union from full time paid officers, its branches, it’s national
committees and it’s annual delegate conference where, despite the fact that
hardly any members participate in the ‘democratic’ process (ha ha), the union’s
policies are made.
With huge cuts for union time off in the
last year, you just know that the only ones who will carry on fighting for the
revolution will be the diehards, the Moonies of the ultra left.
I hear people saying that ordinary punters
should stand for election against the Trots but I will argue we’ve tried that
already and it didn’t work. Since 1984,
those who reject Trotskyism have tried with decreasing levels of success to
turn the union round. And now it’s all
too late.
I hear the voices of those who say that
there should be a list of sensible candidates –a slate - to run against the
incumbent ultra left but those who say that have no democratic structure behind
them and no policies (other than ‘we are not Trots’).
I have agreed with the arguments that there
is no point in running a slate to oppose the ultra left. It’s too big a mountain to climb. Any fight back would need to start at the
bottom up, not the top down, and I see few people who want to enter the fray. Because if they – whoever they might be – did
decide to fight the Trots, they’d need to go in with their eyes wide open. It would be a long fight, a very ugly and
exhausting fight and, without huge resources of people and, dare I say it,
money, an ultimately unsuccessful fight.
The current structure of the union sees a
huge amount of work carried out by ‘lay’ officials. With huge cuts to paid union time off, this
becomes more difficult by the day.
So what to do?
Like all unions, PCS runs an annual
delegate conference where over a thousand representatives get together and
support Socialist Party ‘policies’ and turn them into union policies. Conference costs a fortune, yet only a tiny
minority of members participate in the democratic processes, or have the first
idea of what goes on. Nor do they give a
toss.
My first decision as the union’s new Tsar
would be to abolish conference. With
some of the money saved, I would appoint local organisers to represent existing
members and recruit news ones. They
would get a basic (fair) salary but they would get commission if they were
successful.
I’d carry out a root and branch survey of
the entire union structure and scrap entirely the branch set up. Instead of
lots of Bristol branches in different departments, I’d set up one Bristol
branch, serviced by a full time paid official.
I would reduce the huge area structures to
a bare minimum, as well as the departmental committees, regardless of cries
from the far left of impacting on ‘democracy’ as they call their control of the
union.
Instead of having ‘editorial boards’ of lay
officials for union publications, I would appoint a professional journalist to
oversee union publications and literature.
I would cut delegations to affiliates, I
would scrap donations to organisations no matter how worthy they appear to be;
in short, the union would exist purely to support ordinary members.
I’d abolish all annual elections and make
them at least bi-annually, if not every three years. More frequent elections don’t mean more democracy.
And so it goes.
I’d even seek a meeting with the PM despite
everything that has happened, even to the point of offering a ‘no strike’ deal
in exchange for better pay and conditions and agreements to avoid compulsory
redundancies and transfers.
Surely it would be better than what’s
happening now, where PCS heads to oblivion, lions led by donkeys who have far
greater ambitions than giving a shit about humble poorly paid civil servants?
