Home Office Group Annual Report 2019

PCS Home Office Group Annual Report

Annual report 2019 issued and available on the PCS website.

The PCS Home Office Group 2019 annual report has now been issued. This gives details of the work PCS has undertaken on members behalf throughout the year. The full annual report is available on the Home Office group pages on the PCS website here.

Reproduced below is the foreword to the annual report by James Cox, Group President:

1. The Home Office group annual report provides a good opportunity to reflect on another year’s work, the ups and downs of 2019 and look to 2020 and the challenges ahead.
2. As you will read through the contributions of members of the Group Executive Committee (GEC) this has been an eventful year and your representatives have been working hard to ensure that members’ working lives are improved. But we live in tough times and whilst we have made progress in some areas there are others where we want to make more advances.
3. For us, the statutory ballot on pay was probably the biggest event of the year. Once again, we missed out on breaching the Tory anti-union threshold of 50% turnout. We know the anger on pay is out there and that members are furious that their pay has been eroded over the last decade by under inflation rises. But our second failure to breach the threshold raises serious questions we all need to address. Despite 80% of those voting indicating they wish to take industrial action, despite only missing out by 250 votes in the Home Office – it’s clear we need to improve the way that we communicate and approach ballots.
4. The responsibility for that lies not only with the leadership of the union, those you elect to represent you, but with all of us. We have seen the roll out of a new web-based application that should enable better organising, our data continues to improve, but nothing replaces personal conversations. Our analysis indicates that there may have been up to 40% of members across the whole union who did not have a personal conversation, be it in person with a rep or through phone banking. Clearly this is the first area we can and need to address.
5. Our strength is surely that there are thousands of us; we can all talk to our colleagues at our desk, in canteens, at tea points and break out areas. After we had posted our ballots if we had all just spoken to one other member about the importance of voting, what we sought to achieve and made sure that they had posted their returns we would have breached the thresholds.
6. This observation goes to the heart of what we need to become. We must mobilise as many of our members to become an army of advocates for union membership, participation, and activity. If this was easy, then they wouldn’t call it the struggle! But I continue to think that we can achieve this and improvements in the last year make me believe that we can.
7. Our membership in the Home Office continues to increase, but we still need more reps at all levels, and concentrating on increasing capability and numbers must be a priority. We must recognise, as well, that the diversity of our reps does not reflect the diversity of our membership. We particularly must increase numbers of women reps and those from a BAME background. Additionally, we must look to the next generation of reps and increasing participation from young members is important. The GEC continues to look at ways of improving representation and we welcome further ideas.
8. 2019 was a year of elections. In our union at Assistant General Secretary, with John Moloney newly elected, and at General Secretary with Mark Serwotka re-elected. I am confident that this leadership team will provide strong and dynamic leadership moving forward. Mark has been at the helm of our union for 20 years, transforming us into a fighting union during some tough times, both politically and financially for our union.
9. On a personal level I have found it quite difficult to recover since the General Election in December. The Labour party manifesto contained so much that would have benefited our members, from a straight 5% pay rise for Civil Servants, return to national pay bargaining, retention and extension of trade union rights. This was all in addition to the transformative platform for the rest of the economy designed to re-balance a society allegedly one of the richest in the world, but one that tolerates food bank collections in the foyer of Home Office buildings. The re-election of this Tory government on an increased majority is likely to bring with it further attacks on our members’ terms and conditions and restrictions in pay increases.
10. Many have called the election in December a Brexit election and as we move to implement Brexit and beyond there will be further challenges and work. This will be stressful to our members but will provide opportunities to leverage our position at the frontline and our dedication and importance with advancements in our terms and conditions.
11. We also face continued wrangling over our pensions following successful legal challenges and their implications, plus the 2% reduction in contributions that we believe we are owed and is being withheld. It looks likely that there will also now be another attempt to revise and reduce the terms of the Civil Service Compensation Scheme. This is the scheme that provides the tariff for payments to members who are forced from the department on redundancy grounds.
12. It all sounds daunting, but I believe that we have it within us to win. Our strength lies in our collective approach, our solidarity and the basic principles of fairness underpinning trade unionism. You are all part of one of the largest international progressive movements – together we can support each other, fight for each other and win together.

James Cox (Group President)