Campaigning is now underway in the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), as the mainly civil service membership looks to elect its national the first place. The union is balloting to escalate the action through voting on a work to rule/overtime ban.
There is growing discontent inside JP pilot offices where members who have previously gone in are joining the dispute. To cause greater disruption, there is a need now for a programme of rolling regional action to be adopted.
The PCSU must mobilise its members in other departments to support the dispute. It must coordinate action with other striking public sector workers and claimants facing Blair's assault.
If the dispute is won it would transform the PCSU and inspire civil servants to mobilise arouna ineir many pent up grievances such as national pay. executive committee (NEC). These will be the first such elections for two years, and only the third since the union's creation through the merger of CPSA and PTC in 1998.
The presidency, four vicepresidencies and forty-one other seats on the committee are being contested by two right-wing factions, the Moderates and Membership First, and by a single socialist slate presented by the Left Unity group.
With the campaign taking place against the backdrop of the first major strike in the civil service for six years - in the Department of Work and Pensions - and with a left-wing General Secretary about to take office, there are grounds for optimism about the performance of the Left Unity candidates.
PCS' creation marked a historic low-point for the civil service left, which had lost a long battle to prevent merger being carried out on the terms of the right-wing. The constitution entrenched bureaucratic control and the national leadership was determined to make the civil service safe for Tony Blair's vision of "social partnership'.
Since then, however, the situation has changed due to two factors. First, there has been an upsurge in militancy, as members who had been demoralised by defeats in the 1980s and 1990s, and perhaps hoped for better from New Labour, have begun to rebel, against the more outrageous attacks on their jobs, pay and conditions by management, backed by the Government.
Second, the two right-wing groups who have long controlled the union and its predecessors, have spectacularly fallen out. This has enabled Left Unity to hold the balance of power on the NEC and to win concessions that have promoted members Interests One practical effect of all this has been that members have been willing to vote for strike action and the national disputes committee has been willing to allow this to go anend.
In addition, members elected rank-and-file socialist candidate, Mark Serwotka as general secretary in December 2000.
An extended handover period means that only now will Serwotka assume the full duties of his post, as his hard right predecessor, Barry Reamsbottom, steps down.
Serwotka has already justified the confidence of the 40,000 members who voted for him, by taking an uncompromising stance in opposition to privatisation and in defence of the restoration of national pay bargaining, but he has often been at odds with the NEC.
It is therefore vital that the Left does well in these elections, to ensure that he has the support he needs to provide fighting leadership.