NEC Election Results and Conference 2008

PCS Democrats welcome the outcome of the NEC elections with an almost clean sweep of Democracy Alliance candidates. Members have put their continued trust in an experienced leadership team drawn from accross the political spectrum. In the elections, members recognised the major achievement of the new protocols and rejected the lie that the current PCS leadership was not serious about achieving negotiated settlements.

PCS Democrats recognise though that turnouts in NEC and Group elections are still far too low. There can be no complacency. We must do more to engage with members who don't vote, and those who voted for our opponents. We need to explore ways of increasing participation; less childish name calling in election addresses would be be a good start!

This years Annual Delegate Conference was a success, with plenty of motions heard. Here is a summary of the PCS Democrats attitudes to the headline motions:

Pay and Protecting Public Services: the section was reordered a number of times. We supported EM1, the NEC's long motion, and opposed A13 which mistakenly tried to rule out all multi year pay deals, even if they met all of our other demands.

We opposed EM12 which proposed that the TUC call a general strike. PCS Democrats support co-ordinated action where possible, but a call for a general strike where no trade disputes exist would marginalise PCS at the TUC.

Affiliations: we opposed A24, affiliation to Labour Representations Committee, which is a Labour Party organisation.

Rules: we opposed A33 and A34 on death benefits for PCS members. The motion went too far, however we understand that the NEC will be proposing some changes in the future, and do believe that the death benefit payment should be increased.

Organisation: We supported A43 and A44, the motions on victimisation of PCS activists. PCS Democrats strongly believe that we must protect our Rep's.

We also supported Composite Motion 4 on a UK Borders Agency. We must urgently resolve the organisational issues in this area of work.

Personnel Policy: We supported A74 on LEAN. It's ironic that at the same time as our employers say they want to improve our skills, they also use tools such as LEAN to deskill the work and cut jobs.

Finance: we opposed the cumbersome motions A124 and A125 which did not progress the major campaigning work undertaken by PCS. We also opposed A4 which attempted to reduce the highly effective "Make Your Vote Count" work.