Our strike re-ballot arrived on 16 January 2023 to give us a chance to tell the Tories that enough is enough. In support of this PCS is holding a members meeting about the ballot on Weds 1st Feb 1630-1730.
It is a chance to ask us your questions about the ballot, national strategy, or about a potentially upcoming strike.
This also coincides with the TUC national day of action – with many areas telling the government their economic approach to pay and employment rights is not good enough.
Members can join online via Zoom, or in person at regional PCS Office, Town Centre House, Merrion Centre, Leeds LS2 8LY.
The zoom link is contained in the email to all Leeds members sent on 26/01/2023.
Members are invited to an open meeting of PCS Leeds R&C Branch on Wednesday 26 October. It will be held at Quayside House, Canal Wharf, LS11 5PS opposite ‘Waterlane Boathouse’. We will meet outside 7/8 Wellington Place by 12:00 noon (look for a PCS flag) and walk over, however it is just 8 mins walk from the office and you can choose to meet us there.
The meeting will discuss our industrial action ballot for a living wage, fair pensions and job security, which runs until 7 November. There will be guest speakers from the TUC, UNISON, UCU, and the CWU, to talk about how our ballot fits into the wider industrial picture and how we can win. There will also be a Q&A session, along with a cash prize draw for all attendees for 3 prizes of £40, £20 and £10.
This meeting is a great opportunity to ask questions you may have about the ballot, learn how you can get more involved, and meet reps and fellow members face-to-face. Members are advised to register for the meeting using the link in the email sent 20/10/2022 by Yorkshire and the Humber Hub. Please also let us know if you are attending on the facebook event.
If you are a PCS member, by now you should have received your ballot for the vote on strike action running from 26 September to 7 November 2022.
If you are a PCS member and you haven’t received your strike ballot, you can request a replacement, but you must do this before 24 October 2022.
Requesting a replacement ballot paper can be done via your membership record on PCS Digital. Before requesting, please check your address is up-to-date, as an incorrect address may be the reason you never received your ballot in the first place.
If you have any questions about the ballot, you can check out our Strike FAQ, or contact us.
PCS Leeds branch are holding a rally at noon on payday – the 30th of September. We need members and non members to join us and come say hello outside 7/8 Wellington Place at 12 – we’ll have flags at both exits. This is about raising awareness of the absolutely crucial pay ballot that starts on the 26th. Because we can’t use employer systems to discuss it, many people will be unaware this is happening.
At 12.15 we’re going to then walk to the post boxes opposite Crowne Plaza Hotel on Wellington Street to post ballots – bring yours if you’ve not already posted it.
Please come down, and tell your colleagues to bring their ballots
PCS goes to a national ballot from the 26th September – 7th November 2022, and there has never been a more important time to join, or participate.
We have created a ‘Ballot FAQ’ page that members and non-members can be directed to, to answer some of the questions we are hearing about the ballot
Below are the questions currently listed. We intend to keep this up to date and welcome members and non-members idea for other FAQ that should be listed.
PCS has confirmed it will be holding a strike ballot on 26 September, following a result from March’s consultative ballot that showed our voting membership was overwhelmingly in favour of strike action.
This ballot will run for 6 weeks until 7 November. Because it is postal-only, we are urging you to get ballot-ready by logging into PCS Digital and updating your personal details, ensuring your ballot gets sent to the right address; this way you can have your say and resist real terms pay cuts, job cuts, and the cost of living crisis.
We are voting to strike for:
a 10% pay rise
a Living Wage of at least £15 an hour so all of our members are paid enough to survive
a 2% cut in contributions that our members have overpaid to their pensions since 2018
no further cuts to redundancy terms
a job security agreement
resources provided so overstretched departments have all they need to deliver essential public services
We will be posting a lot over the next three months on our website and across social channels to tell members to update their details and get ballot ready. We’ll need all the help we can get to communicate this essential message, and we’re always looking for volunteers, advocates, and activists to assist us. If you want to help, we’d love to hear from you, so send us a message on our contact form.
Across the country rail workers are striking for better pay and protection from job cuts. Rail workers, like Civil Servants, kept the country running during the pandemic. Many of them face pay freezes that amount to real-terms pay cuts, as pay does not match rising cost-of-living and inflation. They have also been told that there will be redundancies on the horizon.
Does this sound familiar?
Of course, the pay freezes don’t hurt rail bosses, who take home pay packets worth millions of pounds. Of course, it isn’t the bosses facing job cuts. And of course, it’s the workers, not the bosses, being told to make do with their pay and weather the cost of living crisis, despite the face that some low-paid rail workers are facing homelessness despite working six-day weeks.
“Some of the cleaners are homeless: they’re working six days a week, full time, and sleeping at a bus shelter at night.”
I spoke to four young RMT members from across the board about why they are striking this week and why we should all support them https://t.co/jkPi5dv32L
Predictably, the press is working its hardest to demonise the rail strikers, stating they are disrupting the country by preventing rail services from going ahead. This of course, is the point of strike action: if they weren’t disruptive, no-one would care. Ultimately, it’s only fair for an employee to withhold their work if they aren’t being paid enough to live and if their workplaces aren’t safe, and this is what striking RMT workers are doing.
PCS wholeheartedly supports rail workers taking action. Activists from PCS Leeds branch will be visiting the RMT picket to show solidarity with rail workers, and we encourage our members to show solidarity in whatever way they can: tweet about it, bust one of the many myths going around, share the infographic below, be public about your support, and don’t buy the Sun, the Daily Mail, or any of the papers demonising striking workers—their millionaire owners personally benefit from a system that thrives on unfairness and inequality, so why on earth would they support workers asking for fair pay and conditions?
This September, we will be balloting our own members to take industrial action, meaning in autumn, it could be us on the picket. The papers, Tories, and bad bosses will try to pit workers against each other, so we need to build a national movement of solidarity between unions and workers across the UK, support industrial action where we see it, and campaign for fair pay and conditions for everyone.
After 2 years of devoted service and hard work to keep our country afloat during the pandemic, Civil Servants have been thanked with the scandalous news that they will be subject to 90,000 job cuts.
This is unacceptable. And it doesn’t end with the Civil Service: living standards are plummeting while costs are soaring, wages are stagnating across the board, and workers’ rights across the UK are under threat—just take a look at what they did to workers at P&O.
On 18 June, workers are uniting in London to deliver a clear message to this government: we demand better. This is a march and rally, organised by the Trades Union Congress, telling our government we need:
Real pay rises and a real living wage
A ban on dodgy working practices like zero hour contracts and fire and rehire
Taxes on the billionaires and energy companies, whose wealth and profits grew during the pandemic while we suffered
An end to racism and discrimination at work
An end to the government’s agenda to destroy workers’ rights and unions
Activists and reps from PCS Leeds will be travelling to London on 18 June to let our voices be heard. We ask our members to join us.
Transport will be arranged by PCS so members can attend without cost on the day, so if you are a member and want to attend, please get in touch with one of our reps, who will keep you informed. We cannot talk about this using R&C systems, so please be mindful of this.
If you are a member of PCS, you should have received your Consultative Ballot today. We advise you vote YES.
The Consultative Ballot is a crucial part of PCS’s Pay and Pensions campaign. It asks if you would be willing to take part in industrial action to support the campaign for fairer pay and pensions. A Consultative Ballot is a way of finding out members’ views, and a second ballot is always held before any strike action is taken.
Throughout the campaign, please remember that under the employee relations agreement you cannot use HMRC systems to talk about industrial action.
Why you should vote YES
PCS urges you to vote YES on both options on the ballot. If PCS have a clear message from members saying they would be willing to take industrial action, the union will be in a much stronger position when it comes to negotiating everything—not just pay and pensions—as it proves members are willing to stand up for these issues. Voting YES at this stage does not oblige you to take action at a later date, but it does give us more negotiating power before proceeding to a strike.
Your Ballot
Voting ends on 21 March. The ballot should have been emailed to you on your main registered email with PCS. If you have not received the ballot, the details PCS hold about you are probably out of date, and you need to update them on PCS Digital.
If you are a PCS member working in Leeds, and want to know more about the Pay and Pensions campaign and the voting process, please contact one of your union reps, or alternatively get in touch using our contact form.
If you work in the Civil Service, chances are you are overpaying your pension by 2%. This means you lose on average £500 a year, and this money should be paid back.
This much money makes a huge difference, and with the upcoming cost of living increases and hikes in National Insurance and energy prices, for many members it could mean the difference between living comfortably and struggling. If PCS’s Pay & Pensions campaign is successful, it could mean getting your overpayments repayed to you, backdated from April 2019 when the contribution rate was incorrectly changed.
By using the Pensions Loss Calculator, you can find out exactly how much you are losing each year. The answer will probably shock and anger you, and the best thing you can do is to vote in the upcoming consultative ballot. This way, you can tell PCS what you are what action you would be willing to take to make a change.
In order to vote in the consultative ballot, you will need to make sure your details are up-to-date on PCS Digital. If you work in HMRC Leeds and want more information on how to do this, or how to get involved locally in the campaign, speak to a one of the Leeds union reps.
Leeds & District Revenue & Customs Branch 