Public and Commercial Services Union

With the government spending cuts programme starting to have an impact on communities across the country our Make Your Vote Count (MYVC) campaign raised our national campaign concerns with politicians during the elections that took place on 3 May 2012 and also the by-elections that took place in November 2012.

For more information on the by-elections please visit the regional webpages.

Activities in the different elections

In the local elections taking place in England, Scotland and Wales we asked party group leaders from each council to support our pledges and selected one council where job cuts (PCS members and across the public sector) will have a dramatic impact.

In our target council per region/nation we held a question time meeting to grill the candidates on where they stand on our concerns.

Also in councils where far right parties stood we worked with other anti-fascist organisations to host events, leaflet members and the public and we encouraged people not to vote for far right parties.

In London we undertook a variety of activities, these included:

• Writing to all candidates (excluding far right candidates) and publishing them on our website.
• Writing to London assembly candidates and publishing them on our website.
• Produced an e-action members were able to send to their candidates.
• Publicised a mayoral candidates’ question time event and at least four regional constituency events across the capital.
• Involving as many organisations as possible to make our campaign and events as effective as possible, this included other unions, trades councils, like-minded community organisations and charities and public sector alliances.