Latest From Napo 14

Here's the latest e-mail sent this morning to all Napo members:-

Dear All
 
Grievances and Appeals
Technically, you should not use a grievance as part of a political campaign because it relates to an individual’s experience at work.  However, if lots of people do this en masse and it creates a stir, then it’s an extremely useful by-product.  That’s what we achieved and it drew attention to the fact that lots of people were unhappy.  The BBC ran with this as a national story.  If any bidder was rubbing their hands together and thinking “Mmmm, Probation, what a lovely compliant workforce” we have given them cause to think again.  We will continue to apply industrial pressure and members, on an individual basis, can play a big part in this.  Centrally we don’t have the resources to cover all 35 branches with individual support and so the leadership and support from branch executives to members has made, and is making, all of this possible.  Sticking your head above the parapet can make us feel wary at work and it takes courage.  What you’ve shown is that when loads of people do this together we achieve strength and confidence- the very essence of a trade union.

The Bidders
The profit-obsessed are frightened by two things: strong union membership and a “lively” staff group.  Any whiff of unquestioning compliance or lack of unionism has the privateer salivating uncontrollably.  If that just made you shudder- don’t let it happen.  Keep recruiting into Napo and watch out for further industrial action announcements.   The bidders are getting very suspicious of the MoJ’s antics.  There are vast and complex rules relating to the competition process but the essential ingredient is simple: the MoJ wants to sell “probation”.  The bidders want to know what they are buying but the MoJ doesn’t know what they are selling.  Here’s a simplified version of the “high level” talks:

MoJ: “Would you like to buy a CRC?”
Bidder: “I’m interested.  Can you give me a bit more information?”
MoJ: “Like what?”
Bidder: “Can I make a profit?”
MoJ: “Yes, definitely! We have a PbR mechanism but we can’t quite work it out.”
Bidder: “Oh.  Will we have to supervise the under 12 months?  It sounds quite expensive.”
MoJ: “Not sure because it’s not law yet.  They’ll all have £46 on release though!”
Bidder: “Ok. Erm, what about the staff?
MoJ: “What about them?”
Bidder: “Will we have freedom to massively cut numbers and slash wages?”
MoJ: “Well, there’s quite long continuous service and other binding agreements with the unions and they sometimes get a bit shirty…..”
Bidders: “Don’t call us, we’ll call you….”
 
And so on.  Even the civil servants walk around shaking their heads in disbelief at the madness of it.  The staff split has been a horrendous experience but the fight isn’t over by a long way. 

Compliance
You will be asked to undertake all sorts of tasks to assist the government with its insane timetable- they can’t do it without you.  We are still working to contracted hours (not an exact science in our business) and maintaining service delivery (with a staff shortage) in a massive organisational change will not happen if all members just keep to their jobs.  Temps are being induced with massive payments, people are being offered overtime for stationary audits, courts are only kept running through sessional reports.  Literally everything is hanging by a thread and it won’t take much more stress for it to collapse.  After the split, we are still all in the public sector and, until the sell-off, life will be hard but the service can still be rescued.  As the shadow operations crank into gear there will be massive risks to service delivery which could be unknown to us at present.  If you cannot allocate cases or court reports, if people are being constantly “loaned” from NPS to CRC and back again because of the ludicrous staff split, if it takes you additional hours to undertake simple tasks, if partnership work suffers you must let us know because this is exactly what MPs are waiting for.  They need the evidence to hold the minister to account.

CRC or NPS?
To laugh is real gallows humour but many trusts are now undertaking a secondary expression of interest exercise.  Why?  Because people are in the wrong places!  How surprising.  The staff split was never fit for purpose and never agreed, partly because it would cause this amount of chaos.  Senior managers are also tearing their hair out.  Although the secondary EoI is an attempt to prevent staff being overburdened, it just highlights why this whole sorry thing shouldn’t be happening in the first place.  In the early days some were saying that the NPS was a ‘superior’ organisation, we now hear that the thought of micro management by NOMS is driving people into the CRC.  Rock and a hard place indeed. 
 
Meanwhile we look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in Birmingham next week
   
 
Tom Rendon               Ian Lawrence
National Chair             General Secretary