CONSULTATION RESPONSES PRO FORMA
NAME
GROUP
PCS Proud National
Committe
PCS Proud
SUBJECT
ORGANISING
How do you believe the union could adapt
our structures, communications and other
ways of working to strengthen workplace
organisation?
BRANCH
ANY UNION ROLE(S)
COMMENTS
PCS Proud has consulted its members by putting a contact form on the Proud
website which allowed members to respond to the review questions. The
response is based on that.
Equality networks play a key role in the union. The role of Proud is:
 To provide advice/reports to the NEC as required
 To provide advice/support to members, branches and groups
 Co-ordinate activities amongst our membership
 Co-ordinate activities on a national basis (LGBT History Month etc..)
Having considered ways of working, Proud believes that co-ordinating equality work
from the centre is key. This way we can ensure that all regions, branches and groups
have the same information and are carrying out activities with the same objective in
mind.
We believe that PCS ought to do more for History Month events. Proud is working on
providing up to date LGBT History Month materials for PCS to use on a wider basis.
SUBJECT
COMMENTS
PCS Proud believes that PCS should have a full equality strategy that is contributed to
by all equality networks (much like our organising strategy) This strategy ought to
require branches and regions to carry out equality activity as well as introduce
collaborative working between networks.
The Proud National Committee believes that the equality department is key to the
work of all equality networks. Whilst largely self-organising, the equality department
provide a lot of logistical support and carry out activities that we would otherwise
struggle to do because of the attacks on facilities in the workplace and facilities time.
If PCS is more in favour of organising in hubs, we would need to be assured that each
hub would carry out equality activity. Some regions are lacking in this at the moment
due to the strain placed upon them by other needs. Furthermore, we believe that each
hub should have individual lay reps to cover the different equality strands to prevent
there becoming a hierarchy in equality as each network is just as important as the
next.
The PCS LGBT Seminar is a way of providing training and support to members and
reps which has led to people becoming involved in their branches and regions and
even GECs etc… we believe that PCS should continue with seminars such as this as we
find that we gain a lot from them. Organising the LGBT seminar also provides
training/support for those who are not out in the workplace or at home.
One key point from our members is that the union’s equality networks need to be
more visible and organise activities that can be widely accessed by members. This
could take the form of branch events/regional events for equality. The funding and
support needs to be in place for such events.
SUBJECT
UNION DEMOCRACY
What changes to our democratic and
representational arrangements could be
made to encourage greater participation by
members in the union's campaigns and
internal democracy?
COMMENTS
PCS Proud has democratic structures that include:
 National Committee elections
 Debating and voting on motions at AGM
 Election of Proud’s proposed delegation to TUC LGBT Conferences
We note that some of our structures in the union have reserved seats or targets for
women and black members. We believe that, if reserved seats are to continue to be
used, we should have reserved seats for all equality networks including Young
Members, LGBT Members and Disabled Members.
The union needs to undertake a campaign that promotes our internal lay structures to
members and encourages them to get involved. We are seeing less people becoming
involved in our lay structures due to attacks on facilities time (there is no time for
Proud work at all).
Proud also believes that elections for internal structures could be done online if PCS
could find a solution in doing this. Whilst strike ballots may have a statutory threshold
with archaic methods of voting, this doesn’t mean that we have to use these methods
for internal PCS business.
It would be useful if PCS could, in the future, create promotion materials that tell
people how they can be nominated for branches, groups and NEC roles as some
branches put more effort into seeking nominations than others. Simply putting “we
are also seeking nominations for the roles of…” in small writing at the bottom of an
AGM calling notice is not good enough.
SUBJECT
CAMPAIGNING
How can we further strengthen the union’s
approach to campaigns so that more
members actively participate in their
development and success?
COMMENTS
We need to ascertain what benefit the national equality networks have compared to
group equality networks. By enlarge, most groups do not have equality networks.
However, we need to ensure that the information is consistent across the entire
membership. The benefit of having national equality groups is that information can be
fed to the NEC and to branches/members of networks consistently.
Information seems to go out to branches and groups but sometimes it doesn’t reach
members. Branches sometimes don’t issue information due to attacks on the union in
the workplace, therefore they don’t have the capacity to do things like leafleting and
desk dropping etc...
It would be good if branches had campaigns officers that could co-ordinate
campaigns at branch level and thus freeing up secretaries and organisers to carry out
other essential activities.
PCS Proud has a campaigns and communications organiser which allows us to ensure
that campaigns reach members. The success of the #IAmGay (a Hashtag still widely
used) campaign and the concept of holding a sign and posting to social media were
simple ideas put to Proud reps back in 2013 who then flooded social media with
pictures and tweets etc… It was only through sheer determination to fight a particular
issue that made the campaign successful. This campaign was co-ordinated through
our lay structures in Proud.
We believe that the Campaigns department ought to consider campaigns training in
each region/nation and equality networks so that lay representatives can make sure
SUBJECT
COMMENTS
they have the tools and knowledge on how to campaign on issues that impact our
members.
We also need to undertake a review of campaigns and identify which ones were
successful (#IamGay, National Gallery campaign and others) and learn lessons from
them. Whether this is in the form of surveying members or asking members to
contribute their views via a similar consultation such as this.
We need to survey our lay representatives to ascertain what activities they are
prepared to carry out in campaigns so we can decide, effectively, what action can be
taken.
BARGAINING
How can we change our approach to
bargaining with the employer to achieve
more effective outcomes for members?
PCS Proud doesn’t often get asked for advice on bargaining issues, however, we note
that there are existing NEC sub-committees that deal with union wide bargaining
issues. Saying this, in groups with advisory committees, the LGBT advisory committees
are ‘key stakeholders’ in providing assistance and support in bargaining issues. We
need to ensure that the NEC starts to use the equality assets that it has. Equality isn’t
just something that networks and groups should strive for but something that the NEC
should strive for when dealing with bargaining issues.
We need to promote the role that equality networks can play in bargaining .For
example, when a GEC or PCS negotiators are considering bargaining issues, they
should come to the equality networks to see if there is any impact on any groups of
members.
PCS Proud is more than happy, subject to the correct amount of funding etc… to
review proposals (on a confidential basis) and provide views to negotiators.
SUBJECT
FINANCE
What changes to the union’s income,
expenditure and financial structure could we
make that would strengthen our ability to
thrive despite reductions in membership?
COMMENTS
The funding for PCS Proud is considerably lower than in previous years. Out of our
budget we have to fund our AGM as well as all of our other activities. In previous years
we used to be able to allocate funding to our reps to take work forward in regions and
nations. However, this doesn’t seem to be something that we can do on a wide scale
any more.
To reduce our costs PCS Proud has:
 Changed meetings to Saturdays in the PCS Birmingham Office
 Carries out a lot of work by email in-between meetings
 Moved AGM to a Saturday so that travel is cheaper
 Created new material ourselves with support from PCS HQ
EQUALITY
Are there any further steps the union can
take to develop our equality work and
ensure our elected structures are
representative of our union’s membership?
Opening dialogue with the finance department is difficult because we find there are
barriers when we need more funding. This needs to be reviewed by the NEC.
The NEC need to
 Review equality structures and decide how best to organise them so that
information can be issued consistently and that the NEC can receive
information consistently.
 Either abolish reserved seats from lay structures or have them for all equality
groups
 Produce statistics on membership equality info on a national scale so that we
can make a point of publishing how representative we are of our members.
 Ensure every branch has an equality officer that is responsible for carrying out
work for ALL equality groups.
 Establish a campaign to get people to fill in equality info on iMembership.
SUBJECT
COMMENTS
 Provide and promote equality training for members so that people understand
the importance of equality impact assessing, reasonable adjustments and other
equality issues faced by our members.
DEVOLVED NATIONS
How can we develop our work with
members in devolved areas to strengthen
our bargaining, campaigning and organising
agenda?
PCS needs to publicise information about our devolved nations more widely so that
members who are not in devolved administrations understand the importance of
campaigning on issues that are devolved. For example, equal marriage in Northern
Ireland is a big issue for LGBT members but not heard about on a national basis.
We need to ensure that devolved nations have equality officers that are able to
provide training and education on equality issues.
We need to also be pro-active in taking equality issues to the STUC, WTUC and ICTU.
OTHER COMMENTS
We play an active role in the TUC, STUC, WTUC, ICTU committees and conferences,
however, we note that we have been restricted to six delegates at the TUC LGBT
Conference. Six delegates to the TUC LGBT Conference is not enough as it drowns out
our voice in the backdrop of the bigger unions. For us to be able to play an effective
role, we feel this number needs to be increased.
PCS Proud used to be able to provide accredited training for our members, however,
we were advised that following our last training course, in Blackpool, that there is no
funding for Proud training. With this and a review of equality seminars taking place,
SUBJECT
COMMENTS
we need to ensure that LGBT members receive the same opportunities as the other
networks.