Hello and welcome to the PCS Southend website. For those of you who have stumbled across this site accidentally it may be helpful if I give you a brief outline of what the PCS does, how it is organised and how we in Southend fit into that structure.

The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) Union represents staff working for the Civil Service and its agencies. It is the sixth largest Union within the TUC and is growing stronger all the time.

PCS National looks after internal organisation, provides various services to Members such as legal assistance and training and provides a structure to look after the various Groups within it. It is the overarching body of the Union which is responsible for putting into practice the desires of the Members.

At Group level, for example Customs and Excise, the Union is responsible for negotiating issues that affect everyone within that Group i.e. pay, terms and conditions of service and wide scale personnel issues. They also provide support and assistance to Branches.

Wherever you work within the Civil Service you will have a Branch that looks after your area. It might be a National Branch or it might be a Branch within a specific area, in this case Southend Customs and Excise.

At Branch level we are responsible for things such as representing individuals in grievance or disciplinary cases, dealing with queries from Members about work issues that affect them, making sure the members in our area have regular communications from both Group and National levels, looking after the Health and Safety of Members at work and negotiating with local managers to represent Members interests and protect their rights at work.

Hopefully this site will be used not only to provide information to Members in Customs Southend but will be used as an interactive communication tool. It is also our hope that Branches of other Departments in Southend will visit the site and may eventually wish to contribute. By using this site you will be able to keep yourself up to date with Union news and information as well as communicate with the Officers and each other via the forum.

Some of the information on the site will eventually be restricted to members only but I hope there will be enough of interest here to encourage non-members to join up and this can be done via the recruitment page. Your feedback on the site is welcomed and your comments can either be posted to the forum or sent to the Union Office directly via the contacts page.

Lastly please use this site wisely whilst you enjoy it and remember that any organisation, particularly a Union, is only as strong as the Members it has. Join up now and if you are already a Member think about getting more involved.

Fiona Staff
PCS Branch Secretary
Customs Southend