Those Letters

Many colleagues are reporting the arrival of 'those letters' and the remaining Trusts, including London, will be sending them out in the next couple of days. Here is the latest on the subject from Pat Waterman, Chair of Greater London Napo branch:-

Staying Sane in Insane Situations 

The decision of the Probation Board on Friday 29th November was to instruct the Chief Executive to begin arrangements for the Secretary of State's staff transfer scheme in readiness for the closure of LPT and the creation of the NPS and CRC's.
  
According to the information sent to you by Heather Munro last week a "Formal Local Consultation" with the trade unions, about the way in which the scheme is to be implemented, would begin at the Local Joint Panel Meeting (LJP) which took place yesterday. The LJP is the regular monthly meeting between the Senior Management Team (SMT) and the trade unions. 
  
At the meeting yesterday the SMT gave notice that it intended to prepare to send out letters to all staff which would either advise them of their "automatic" assignment to either the NPS or a CRC or would invite them to express an interest in either the NPS or CRC. 
  
In accordance with the instructions of our national officers, both recognised trade unions (NAPO & UNISON) gave notice of their intention to lodge a formal local dispute. 

I will be meeting with my UNISON colleagues tomorrow to write and deliver notice of this local dispute and I will circulate details of it to you all. 
  
The advice of our national officers and officials is that you should lodge a grievance on receipt of one of these letters 
  
I asked that I be provided with copies of the letters that LPT intends to send out to you all in advance of them being sent. My request was granted and it will be my intention to provide you with further guidance tailored to the particular wording of the letters being sent. 
  
There then followed a very odd discussion in which the trade unions tried to understand how we could engage in formal consultation, with a view to reaching any sort of agreement, on plans to implement a scheme that was still the subject of national negotiations. We eventually agreed to at least meet with SMT every Tuesday afternoon to listen to their plans. 
  
So to summarise: 

•        A formal local dispute will be lodged by the trade unions tomorrow 

•        Letters will start to go out probably by the end of the week 

•        You are being advised to lodge a grievance on receipt of a letter advising you on your re-assignment or on receipt of a letter that seeks an expression of interest. 

•        Further local guidance will be issued on how to lodge a grievance. 
  
According to my information LPT is one of the last trusts to issue these letters. As it is the largest trust this is a GOOD thing. It may be that with all the best of intentions on the part of the SMT it is simply not possible to meet the deadline of 1st April 2014. This would also be a GOOD thing. 

Remember that being sent to either the NPS or the CRC is a BAD thing.  There are likely to be cuts in both sectors in the future. Remember also that this palaver is as a consequence of the Secretary of State's wish to break up existing Probation Trusts and put large parts of our work up for sale. 
  
Finally, although I know it is hard, I would again urge you to follow both national and local advice and only work your hours. 
  
In response to my question as to how she expected staff to carry on with business as usual, when there was so much uncertainty regarding their futures, Heather Munro assured me that she had no such expectation. So I suggest that you take heart from this. Please participate in the industrial action. Together we can make a difference. 

Pat Waterman 
Branch Chair

On the subject of grievance letters, I've been contacted by a regular reader with an idea and I'm very happy to publish it here. If there are other people with great ideas, or who just want a platform on which to give vent to their feelings, please get in touch via the link on my profile page.

INDIVIDUAL GRIEVANCES GIVEN VOICE?   

The Human Resources processes linked to Transforming Rehabilitation appear to have two main drivers. The first is speed. Whatever expectations that Probation staff have learned to have in relation to recruitment and role selection have been swept aside in favour of a process that is designed simply to get the job done within the ever-shrinking time available before we hit the wall on 1^st April. 

The second objective relates to the need to ensure that, as Trusts ‘morph’ into the proposed NPS/CRC set-ups, those who are engineering the processes locally do not direct the best staff into the NPS at the expense of the soon-to-be-privatised CRC's. No consideration will be given to performances, competence, disciplinary record, sickness record, interviewing skills, presentation – the process is anonymised and managed using only the subject’s role profile and risk-related caseload data. 

The recent ‘Failure to Agree’ lodged by the National Negotiating Committee, another development that is clearly linked to the Justice Secretary’s reckless timetable rather that the willingness or otherwise of either party to work out their differences, resulted in the MoJ issuing instructions to Trusts to implement the assignment process immediately, without waiting for that national negotiating structure to resolve issues relating, amongst others, to pensions, continuity of service and redundancy. The assignment letters indicating to which organisations staff are to be allocated are already in the hands of many Trust employees and the rest are likely to receive theirs within days. 

NAPO has issued guidance to it’s members that they should respond to the ‘Automatic Assignment’ and ‘Expression of Interest’ letters by submitting grievances and by indicating that any choices or ‘Expressions of Interest’  they make are made under duress and without sufficient information on which to base any decisions. Many employees have already submitted grievances and others are drafting theirs as we speak. The response of the employers to grievances, however, are likely to be superficial and dismissive (the MoJ has already told Trusts that local disputes registered because of the implementation of the assignment process should be rejected). Trusts are already talking in terms of dealing with appeals as a ‘paper process’, rather than implementing any fuller investigation of the concerns raised.

In light of the likely response to the submission of individual grievances, the letters themselves, however heartfelt and whatever their individual merits, are likely to be filed or disposed of, forgotten about and dismissed as irrelevant, further evidence of the cavalier attitude of the MoJ to the management of Human Resources, the agreed policies and processes of existing Trusts and the whole issue of Industrial Relations in general. Fundamentally, it shows a complete disregard for the anger and disillusionment felt by the thousands of Probation staff who are being subjected to this monstrous process, despite many years of improving performance against reducing resources.

In an effort to give voice to the thousands of staff affected by this process and to allow the legitimate grievances of staff to become a matter of public record, colleagues are invited to copy their grievance letters anonymously onto the comments area of this blog. It would be useful if anyone posting their letter could initial it to head off any suggestions that the letters are in any way faked (it is sad to see that many staff who used to feel comfortable challenging the status quo now feel that they cannot do so openly - another victory for Grayling?). 

Interested parties need to know the strength of feeling of the people who have, to date, behaved entirely professionally and who have delivered their required objectives to an excellent standard. A series of posted grievance letters will offer irrefutable evidence of the strength of feeling of those staff being abused by this process and offer support to others who may be on the cusp of submitting. More importantly, however, it will prevent the MoJ and the privateers who are waiting to pounce from suppressing the notion that the privatisation of Probation is universally opposed by the only people who have the skills necessary to actually implement it.

Guest Blogger

PS As an alternative, copies of grievance letters can be submitted via the contact details to be found on the profile page. No names or other identifying details will be published.