Members across the union will be hugely disappointed and demoralised with today’s announcement of the DWP pay ballot result.
Despite a 5-week balloting period, only 37.5% of members were convinced to vote, making it by far the worse result for a pay ballot in a large group since the introduction of the 2016 trade union act.
As the union has missed out by the 50% threshold by so much, we are unable to call any action and the pay campaign this year is dead in the water. This despite the horrific position on pay DWP staff have been left with.
It would be very easy for us to place all blame for this result on the campaign run by this year’s DWP Group Executive Committee (GEC), and it’s true that the campaign was woeful, but we need to accept that the problem in DWP runs much deeper than a poorly executed 5-week ballot campaign.
Unfortunately, the leadership don’t have the inclination or ability to address these issues. This was made clear to members hours after the result, when the group published a very undignified list of claims and excuses about the ballot, including the positively Orwellian claim that ‘your GEC has run a strong campaign’. Which begs the question, what would a weak campaign look like?
It will convince no members or reps involved on the ground who will believe their eyes and ears. But of course, it isn’t aimed at us DWP members, it’s aimed at shoring up support across the rest of the union during the ongoing branch AGM season.
Back to fundamentals
This result is not an aberration, and as we’ve said, it cannot be soley laid at the feet of a poor 5-week campaign. Decades of top-down organising and bargaining has rendered the union inert in DWP.
Since the right-wing were overthrown by mass membership mobilisation in the early 2000’s, reps and members have been told that as long as you vote for the right people to lead the group every year, you don’t need to concern yourselves with anything else.
This model ensured that a culture of complacency set root in workplaces, members were slowly stripped of their agency and control moved from the workplace to the group.
Over the years, attacks such as check-off, the Employee Deal and years of real-terms pay cuts, which should have rallied members to action, has instead resulted in a collapse in union density and participation. Demonstrated by the collapse in Group density from 75% in 2016 to less than 50% today.
Stats which leave us as a union powerless in the face of the employer who knows our weakness and is able to respond to our admittedly woeful bargaining efforts with such distain.
Some branches, from across the factional spectrum, but most consistently those who side with the Independent Left, have managed to swim against this tide, and they consistently achieve higher membership engagement, but this is despite the Group Leadership.
Membership control
While it’s clear to us that pay is a significant issue for members in DWP. An issue we’ve been consistently vocal on, the insistence of the Group to ignore other issues which have demonstrably significant members’ support remains a key issue.
For example, hybrid workers, hundreds of which tuned up to members meetings to vote in favour of action against the increase of the office attendance mandate were refused a ballot. Similarly, members in HQ London, 69% of which attended to members meetings and physically voted for action against redundancies were denied a ballot. Instead, the GEC made the decision on their behalf that they would be balloted over pay instead.
Imagine the confusion and frustration of these members. It’s certainly not the actions of a member-led union.
A pay campaign is desperately needed, but the demands need to reflect the interests of all our members. The headline demand of this ballot was to re-open talks and to re-allocate the maximum to the lowest paid.
The GEC are right to prioritise the lowest paid, but without a specific fixed sum or percentage demand for all grades, some members in the middle to senior grades may be forgiven for thinking the demands were either to reallocate money away from them or that any new money would not be directed to their grades. It’s bizarre to us that the dispute didn’t include concrete and tangible demands to agitate around.
Again, if we want to convince the majority to vote for action, we need demands which reflect the interests of the majority of our members.
How do we fix this?
It can’t be fixed overnight, and it certainly can’t be fixed by repeating the same mistakes year after year.
Some things are easier than others. For a start, DWP members need a Group Executive Committee which will listen and support members and branches to fight on the issues that are important to them. Be that hybrid working, redundancies, pay, staffing etc. Members and staff in general are more likely to be engaged with the union and join if we are fighting for their interests.
We also need to be bolder in how we agitate. Passivity is a key symptom of the disease in DWP. Organising rudderless, open-ended ‘fact-finding’ members meetings does not inspire and does not motivate. It’s not ‘organising’ and it’s not ‘leadership’.
Members need to be convinced that there is a plan and that they have the agency to win disputes. This is what members and car-park meetings should be centred on.
But longer term, we need to change the culture.
Across the trade union movement, including parts of PCS, disputes are spreading from the workplace. Where reps on the group are able to organise freely, or willing to organise against their bureaucracy when needed has resulted in explosions of membership and activity. This hasn’t come from the NEC or GEC’s, but from the workplace.
In DWP we need a GEC who will take risks in support of members and who will clear the way for disputes, and who will ensure through training and organising that reps are armed with the tools to agitate effectively.
The alternative is for branches to re-nominate and re-elect the same GEC with the same top-down culture, expecting a different result.
If you agree, we urge PCS members and reps, but especially those in DWP branches to nominate and support candidates on the joint Coalition for Change DWP Group Executive and National Executive slate at their branch Annual General Meetings. Candidates including Bev Laidlaw for National President. A DWP rep whose branch has consistently practiced the principles we advocate, and which are so desperately needed on a national scale.
We also urge reps and members to join PCS Independent Left in fighting for these principles throughout the year.