Making the case for fair pay to a Labour government

These talks are due to conclude by the end of the month and we expect the guidance to be published in August.

Our national executive committee met last week and agreed that we would conduct an analysis of Labour’s stated commitments, consider how they might affect our members and draw up a set of bargaining objectives related to them. We will be tabling those bargaining objectives to the employer shortly.

Our bargaining objectives cover the demands agreed by our annual conference in motion A315, alongside our existing demands in our national campaign which include:

• pay restoration
• pensions justice
• meaningful national pay bargaining
• scrapping job cuts
• creation of new civil service jobs
• genuine flexible working
• reversal of anti-union attacks
• and an end to office closures.

Academic research

In our national pay claim for 2024, we included a report that we commissioned from Dr Mark Williams of Queen Mary University of London. This evidences the case for pay restoration and shows and demonstrates decades of decline, with civil service wages lower now than they were in 1975 when Harold Wilson was prime minister.

We have commissioned a second report which makes the fiscal case for good pay in the civil service. The authors Giorgos Galanis, Queen Mary University of London and Aggela Papadopoulou, SOAS, University of London, explain why pay in the civil service pays for itself over the longer term, contributes to economic growth and does not fuel inflation.  

The report is designed to combat potential arguments from elsewhere that good pay is unaffordable. The NEC agreed to table the report to the employer alongside our bargaining objectives.

We will publish more details shortly.

Check this website and our national social media channels for updates and we will be in touch soon with further news.