Some Questions for Napo

I'm becoming even more confused and irritated at the dense fog of misinformation, accusation, claim and counter claim that has descended upon us recently, and particularly since the recent House of Lords debate. Questions like this on the Napo forum need answering:-

The following is from the Offender Rehabilitation Bill debate on 11th March 2014. Please can NAPO clarify its accuracy and meaning ASAP.

"It is difficult to understand why there is apparently—so the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, says—discontent among the staff, because a deal has been negotiated with the unions. We have been undertaking negotiations with probation trade unions and the employers’ representatives over a national agreement for staff transfer that will protect the terms and conditions of staff transferring to the CRCs or the NPS. Probation trade unions and the Probation Association, which represents trusts, ratified the national agreement on staff transfer on 29 January 2014. Trade unions have also withdrawn all local trade disputes.

The national agreement offers a very good deal for existing staff, and demonstrates our commitment to fairness by going much further than we are legally required to do. Staff will transfer to the new probation structures with their existing terms and conditions in place. The additional protections set out within the agreement include a guarantee of employment in the new probation structures from 1 June 2014, no compulsory redundancies for a period of seven months following share sale and an enhanced voluntary redundancy period of up to 67.5 weeks. Alongside our negotiations, the programme has put in place a dedicated consultative forum for effective engagement with trade unions and employers’ representatives. We will continue to engage closely with trade unions and employers throughout the transition to the new probation structure."

I know I'm not the only one who wants some clear and unambiguous answers from Napo HQ because my email inbox is registering an above average amount of discontent, together with copies of documents of one kind or another. Like this that was sent to bidders some time ago:- 

Dear

National Collective Bargaining, Terms and Conditions and Pensions in Community Rehabilitation Companies

Napo, UNISON and GMB/SCOOP, the three recognised Probation trade unions, are writing to all 31 potential bidders for the community rehabilitation companies (CRCs) which the Ministry of Justice plan to sell later this year via a share-sale. Please accept this letter as an introduction to the unions which will be operating in the CRCs post share-sale, as well as an overview of our agenda for the future.

Trade union membership has remained at a high level in the Probation Service for many years, and we have a skilled trade union activist base among the workforce. We have also developed, over time, a social partnership approach to employee and industrial relations with the probation employers, and Ministry of Justice, which has successfully delivered a stable industrial climate within the Service. 

We are pleased that the recent agreements reached at the Probation Service National Negotiating Council (NNC) and Standing Committee for Chief Officer Grades on ‘Staff Transfer and Protections’ provide us with the means to take this successful industrial relations model into the CRCs.

We would like to draw your attention to the following collective bargaining provisions which will be a requirement on each CRC (both pre- and post-share sale):

• Continued recognition of the three Probation trade unions
• National Collective Bargaining to govern the pay, terms and conditions of all CRC staff, including new starters
• Existing national collective agreements on pay and conditions to apply to all staff, e.g. job evaluation, pay grades, premium pay etc.
• Maintenance of existing funding levels for national and local facility time for trade union representatives 

Each CRC will depend on the commitment and skills of the workforce, which will transfer from relevant Probation Trusts, to deliver on its contractual obligations to the Ministry of Justice. The current pay and conditions package, enjoyed by those Probation staff who willtransfer into the CRCs, has been one of the most important factors in delivering such a committed and high-skill workforce.

With this in mind, and in light of the above collective bargaining provisions, to which CRC owners will be bound, we make the fairly obvious point, that in putting your bid(s) together you will want to price labour costs on the basis that new starters to your CRC workforce (s) will be given pay and conditions that reflect existing national collective agreements. You will have been made aware of the current terms and conditions package for probation staff through your own due diligence work. You will not be surprised to know that we are not prepared to countenance a two-tier workforce emerging in the CRCs, and will vigorously oppose any attempt by the eventual owners of CRCs to drive down pay and conditions on the contracts.

Although the collective agreements are silent on the matter, we also put you on notice that we will oppose a two-tier workforce in relation to pension provision and will expect all CRCs to offer the Local Government Pension Scheme to new starters, as well as the transferred workforce. We advise you to price your bid(s) accordingly.

All parties to the above national collective agreements (NOMS, Probation Association and the Trade Unions) signed up to them in full knowledge that the requirement to continue national collective bargaining and decent pay and conditions for all CRC staff would have pricing implications for CRC bidders. We do not need to remind you of the disastrous effect on staff morale and service delivery that would inevitably result from creating a two-tier CRC workforce over pay, conditions and pensions.

We don’t know yet whether we will have any relationship with you in the future, but we would welcome a meeting with you to discuss your response to our letter before you submit your final bid for whatever CRC contract(s) you wish to enter into.

Yours sincerely 

Ian Lawrence                          Ben Priestley                           David Walton

       

            General Secretary                  National Officer                      National Secretary

            Napo                                       UNISON                                 GMB/SCOOP

Please reply to the following address:

Probation Unions, UNISON Centre, 130 Euston Road, London, NW1 2AY

The membership are getting extremely restless, as evidenced by this email, a copy of which was passed to me recently:-

Ian, Tom, 

We have read parts of the House of Commons Hansard note for the Lord's reading of the Offender Rehabilitation Bill. We note Lord Faulks' querying the comments from Lord Ponsonby that staff are very discontented. Lord Faulks cited amongst other things - the regular meetings with the Trade Unions, the withdrawal of the local dispute, the signing off of terms and conditions. We wonder how it can be that Lords have gained the impression that NAPO members are happy? Who has told them this?
 
We note Michael Spurrs comments to Margaret Hodge at the Public Accounts Committee. It seems that he told her that the Unions had agreed to the staff transfer process. This is not our understanding of events. Please can you clarify? If what Michael Spurr has said is incorrect do you intend challenging him on this, or letting Margaret Hodge know? Is there a minute you can produce to prove this is not the case, that NAPO did not agree to the process?
 
It would seem that NAPO's involvement in setting up the Probation Institute is being heralded by the MoJ as NAPO agreeing to TR. How did this state of affairs come about? Clearly being involved in and endorsing the PI has weakened NAPOs position overall. How do you intend to rectify this? 

The rhetoric coming from Chivalry Road and how we are presented elsewhere do not match up. If we are being aggressively 'spun against' why is there no sustained 'counter spin' out there? 

As a Branch we are deeply concerned that all the rhetoric from and to interested parties suggests a staffing group that are compliant and happy with the proposed changes, and willing to support the TR process.This is absolutely not the case, and we are asking that NAPO HQ gives this very clear message to Ministers and the MoJ, and also gives an assurance to its Members that this is being done. 

Thank you 

Then there's this sent today to all Napo members. I'm not at all sure filling in a bloody questionnaire is at the top of anyone's priority list at the moment to be quite frank though:-

Napo is forwarding this survey of members views on the marketisation and privatisation of the Probation Service with our endorsement. The link to the survey is immediately below followed by an explanatory note from its designers.

TR Survey

  

This questionnaire seeks to explore the views of probation workers about government intentions to marketise and part-privatise the service’s functions, as outlined in Transforming Rehabilitation . This proposed the creation of ‘Community Rehabilitation Companies’ (CRCs) which will in due course be subject to marketisation and privatisation and a new National Probation Service, which will be part of the civil service.

We are interested in the views of probation workers about these proposals and would be grateful if you would complete the following questionnaire. There are both open and closed questions. For the former, there are ‘text boxes’ that should give sufficient room for you to write as much as you would like.

The questionnaire is anonymous - you are not asked for any personal details that would enable you to be identified, only some basic demographic information.

The questionnaire should not take you more than 20 minutes to complete. PLEASE NOTE: you are able to save your responses and return to the questionnaire later. However, to do this you must use the same computer and web browser each time you access the questionnaire. This is also dependent upon certain cookies being enabled on your computer, so we would advise completing it in one go. The questionnaire is open until 30th April 2014.

By completing the questionnaire, we will regard you as having given informed consent to participate. The results will be analysed with a view to publishing in an academic journal.

PLEASE NOTE: you may receive this questionnaire via Napo or your Probation Trust. Please complete it only once.

If you have any queries about the research, please feel free to contact either of us by email at:

Thanks in anticipation,
 

Martina Feilzer, Bangor University
John Deering, University of South Wales