Cherie's Place

During recent weeks PCS members and reps have been speaking and writing to MPs who will be standing in the upcoming election.  The results with only 2 days left before polling day show that most of  the Conservative or Labour candidates are not interested in engaging in the process:

PCS and its members asked a series of questions as part of the union’s Make Your Vote Count campaign, which also saw 34 candidates’ question time events organised by PCS reps and members across the UK.  The purpose of the survey is to find out the views of the various candidates on where they stand in relation to public services.  The answers are then published on the PCS website, this allows people to make an informed choice before voting.  It also seeks to get people more interested in the election process and encourage them to go out and vote.

To find out where candidates stand on key issues such as jobs, privatisation and European co-operation to close tax gaps, European election candidates were sent a questionnaire. While the union does not recommend any party or candidate, candidates’ responses are then publicised to members to assist them in deciding who to vote for.

Labour and Conservative candidates mostly either failed to respond to the survey or simply referred voters to a national manifesto.

This shows a worrying contempt for the public at a time when politicians ought to be talking to the electorate to regain some of the trust lost through the scandal over MPs’ allowances, the union says.

Delegates at PCS’s annual conference last month overwhelmingly agreed to build on the MYVC campaign, and over the coming year members will be consulted about the possibility of standing or supporting trade union candidates in some elections. There will then be a ballot of the union’s 300,000 members on the issue.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “You would think that in the current climate, with public trust in politicians at an all-time low, that candidates would want to talk to the public. Instead what we have seen is either a refusal to participate or a robotic response referring us to a manifesto. This is simply not good enough.

So after all that hard work helping out with the campaign I had better go and cast my vote hadn’t I

Tags: Campaign, Elections, MYVC, PCS, Trade Union