As I have remarked on several previous occasions, politics is as much about luck as anything else and I notice that the on-going dispute with Working Links in the Devon, Dorset and Cornwall CRC over their local redundancy agreement provides the perfect curtain-raiser for Napo's AGM starting tomorrow:-
Napo statement to members re proposal by Working Links to reduce Voluntary Redundancy Terms
Working Links have today issued proposals to run a Voluntary Redundancy (VR) Scheme on inferior terms to the Enhanced Voluntary Redundancy Scheme that has been made available to some staff. This has not been negotiated or agreed to by the trade unions and the decision to offer this and the wider issue of the planned job cuts have been referred to the National Negotiating Council Joint Secretaries, to whom the unions and employers will be making further representations. A date for that meeting will be notified soon.
Meanwhile, the probation unions are due to meet next Tuesday 4th October to review the situation that we have reached in our ongoing dispute with Working Links. Our advice to members is to not respond to the VR invitation until we issue more news. This is on the basis that we do not agree to the notion of job cuts, or have faith in the intended operating model and that the contractors should pay what they owe to staff who may want to leave the organisation using the best redundancy policy across their three CRC’s especially since no employee asked to be in this position as a result of the dreadful Transforming Rehabilitation agenda.
Last week’s meeting with Working Links
There has been some understandable speculation about the confidential meeting with senior WL management that took place last week attended by Unison Regional Organiser Glyn Jones and myself. I asked your JNCC reps to back my professional judgement (based on experience of these types of disputes for over 40 years) that at this stage of our fight against the job cuts, and trying to get what members deserve on EVR, it was tactically the right thing to do on a one off basis. In terms of how WL may see this, I can assure you that Glyn Jones and I pulled no punches about the issues at the heart of this dispute and any notion that the employer might have that they have somehow divided the unions is seriously mistaken. But two key things came out of the meeting that were not previously on offer.
Firstly, the presentation by WL of their alleged financial position. The decision to receive that information in confidence at this stage means that none of your reps (as CRC employees) would have been placed under intolerable pressure to not reveal commercially sensitive information which, aside from the employers reticence to disclose, was something that their paymasters in NOMS would not allow them to publish anyway while the Probation Systems Review is underway (conclusions from that are due end of October). Nevertheless, the unions have insisted that a similar presentation be made to the whole trade union side and I hope to progress that as soon as possible. For clarity, just because we have been presented with information does not mean that the unions either believe it or accept it as the basis for justifying the job cuts.
Secondly, we have persuaded WL to now go to the NNC Joint Secretaries as we had requested, and their plans will be called in for review thus giving Napo Branches a further opportunity to challenge what has gone on so far. This will help us to formally record that consultation and negotiation have been inadequate or even totally absent should opportunities arise for third party intervention or legal action down the line.
Stand united against further job cuts
The unions do not believe that steps should be taken to reduce jobs whilst we still await the results of the important Probation Systems Review which will be seeking to address the underperformance of CRC contractors. I have made it clear at Ministerial level that despite our misgivings over TR, we expected to see genuine attempts at innovation and new opportunities for our members to improve services to clients and see their skills utilised to turn lives around as opposed to them being thrown on the employment scrapheap. If WL and other contractors cannot deliver what they purchased then they ought to give serious consideration to handing the keys back to the MoJ.
The foregoing indicates why it is important to stick with or join Napo and be part of our campaign against further job cuts in Working Links. Please await further news after Napo’s AGM in Cardiff (there is still time to register) and next weeks combined union meeting.
Yours in solidarity
Ian
Ian Lawrence
Napo General Secretary
"I asked your JNCC reps to back my professional judgement (based on experience of these types of disputes for over 40 years) that at this stage of our fight against the job cuts, and trying to get what members deserve on EVR, it was tactically the right thing to do on a one off basis."
ReplyDeleteNow that IS a leap of faith... meantime, members shafted by Sodexo were perhaps just sacrificial lambs in this strategy?
Maybe a difference with the Sodexo situation is that one of the existing redundancy policies in the South West area has enhanced provisions for EVR, apparently similar to those in the framework agreement. Thus there is an entitlement to contractual redundancy pay, putting WL in a weaker legal position to Sodexo.
DeleteDespite ongoing discussions WL have made their redundancy offer to the workforce. I hope members follow union advice and ignore it.
N'bria had such a policy. It made no difference to what was offered. Don't hold your breath
DeleteNot the same at all. I was told
DeleteNapo is asking SW members not to respond to the WL inferior offer. Given there are mixed views about the WL vis a vis the Sodexo situation, nothing stops Napo from telling members whether they have any legal protections within existing redundancy policies. If the picture remains confused individuals will sign up.
DeleteIL says 'Trust me', I have 40 years experience. What did he learn from his Sodexo experience? That was an abject failure as regards EVR, why should it be any different with WL. We need transparency, not trust. And it's no breach of any confidentiality to explain why Sodexo ended in failure. We trusted him when he said the judicial review papers - to applause at an AGM - were in the post – and they were, eventually, one year later.
DeleteThinking about my A Level law - there is a saying in contract/commercial law - "buyer beware" which puts the onus for the bargain/agreement on the buyer. Surely, the CRC;s departing from the Enhanced Redundancy package, are doing so illegally? They bought into a contract with certain caveats, and now they are going back on their word. The fact that they got their sums wrong means not a jot! It was for them, prior to purchase to make all the necessary checks,not for the workforce to take the hit. Please can someone in Napo, maybe the GS look into a legal challenge?
ReplyDelete40 years' experience & judgement was clearly brought to bear in agreeing the NNC arrangement for EVR which gave Sodexo too many back doors to leave by, e.g. the bizarre 7 month framework, the 31 March 2015 deadline, the preferential treatment of "HQ" staff & senior management, etc.
DeleteNapo refused to explore any legal avenue in the Sodexo scenario other than to offer a deal with their lawyers to sign off on severance. As mentioned above, some of those Trusts had pre-existing redundancy policies enshrined in their terms of employment but Sodexo rode roughshod over them & the unions capitulated by failing to take on a legal challenge. Naysayers continue to blame "weak staff" but I saw first-hans how staff in Sodexo-owned CRCs were under immense & wholly unreasonable pressure WITHOUT adequate union support. Watching from the sidelines it seemed that the unions had either no idea what to do or were complicit in the process.
When SERCO screwed up in London, Napo wrote about their negotiations in Napo News. Why don't they explain what happened with Sodexo -were any mistakes made, any lessons learned? Let's have some basic history then perhaps history won't go on repeating itself.
DeleteAs in all cases with Sodexo I understand they voluntarily entered into a compromised agreement and as such took the money. If they had been made compulsory redundant then The contract and terms and conditions come into play.
ReplyDeleteThe long and the short is people in these situations become stressed, they feel no way out and prefer to take the money and run. There is nothing to say companies have to follow rules if you sign a compromise agreement, however if you don't and it goes full course to IT their lawyers will then have to justify their actions and failures. We need a prescident and that might take a considerable amount of time.
If people do not volunteer for redundancy then contract terms and conditions come into play. The SW area says its redundancy policy would offer superior terms to a downgraded EVR taken voluntarily. Didn't they take it in Sodexo because their collective agreement was not on a par with the one in the SW? Hence the advice to 'sit tight'.
DeleteFrom my viewing platform those in Sodexo CRCs who took voluntary sverance did so because of numerous factors including (1) there was no strategy, guidance or communication from the union for weeks & weeks & weeks, leaving members high& dry & unsure of their position whilst (2) Sodexo were ratcheting up the pressure on staff to make life-changing decisions within stupid timescales, (3) local CRC managers were bullying & threatening individual staff about caseloads, performance targets, sickness; (4) no-one could establish fact from fantasy vis-a-vis job losses & Sodexo plans for a future operating model, and (5) geography played a critical role for many, e.g. being directed to work some 2 or 3 hours' drive away (or up to 5 hours on public transport) because of office closures was a very real possibility.
DeleteIn that uncertain vacuum with no union support, union membership haemorrhaged, solidarity failed & for many who signed themselves away it was the least-worst-option, i.e. take a percentage of the original EVR or risk being 'managed out' with nothing via disciplinary or ill health or similar.
I still feel that Noms/MoJ must shoulder the responsibility for failing to keep Sodexo in line, in that their 'contract police' failed in their duty to rigorously hold Sodexo to the letter of the contract - in fact the 'police' were totally silent. But why wouldn't they be? They were generally old chums of the new CRC chiefs with an equal commitment to & investment in the success of the CRCs... answerable to those who established & implemented the new paradigm.
I'm not privvy to the SW situation but I would like to think they have success in securing the full EVR for those who WL want to lose.
There is a seeping complacency in NPS Probation that "they wont come for me". But they are, its called 3E. This will be a bureaucratic so slower version of the same thing. Join your Union and fight
ReplyDeletefight TOGETHER.
DeleteFight,NAPO is like Tyson fury. Delays the inevitable. I withdrew my membership ages ago And so should everybody else. The most expensive union. My NAPO rep had a lift from the ACO to my meeting , far too cosy and enough said
ReplyDeleteand your alternative to "fight" is?
ReplyDeleteJoin a decent union
DeleteMany speculations about what may or may not have been the case with Sodexo not paying the agreed EVR terms to staff being made redundant - incidentally nothing "voluntary" about it. As one who left, having taken the much reduced packet, I can say that the staff had no choice. There was no sign of any union support, the Chief Executive said that the EVR package was not being made available and there was nothing we could do about it. The choice was either take the reduced package or be made compulsorily redundant and receive an even worse deal. Staff rightly complained and questioned this but were told that Sodexo were not going to comply with the EVR terms so take what is on offer or be made redundant. There was also huge pressure, timewise, for people to sign up to the Sodexo offer with threats that if you did not do so by a certain date the offer would be withdrawn. Completely bullied and not a soul in sight to assist. I hope the WL staff have better luck but as someone else said - don't hold your breath. It needs a court case to establish that EVR is mandatory or not and it needs the unions to do this, so get on with it NAPO.
ReplyDeleteNAPO need to outline clearly their plan, they need to say don't take less than EVR and if they try to make you compulsory redundant without EVR then we WILL launch a legal challenge. Members need to hear this and know it to be true. This didn't happen with Sodexo/Nacro (can we please not forget Nacro's part in all this) and so staff were left high and dry.
ReplyDeleteI took the reduced shilling as well & a year later (almost to the day) I still carry a volatile mixture of anger & sadness in equal measure. My sadness is at the loss of long term careers, that so much experience was treated with brazen contempt by bullies & that the mendacious ideologues won through. My anger is that staff who had put in years & years of total commitment challenging the behaviours & consequences of lies, deceit, bullying & greed were cheated by lies, deceit, bullying & greed... and that it was their colleagues who prosecuted those acts locally, claiming they were "only following orders".
ReplyDeleteOther than that I'm fine & dandy & just glad to be out of what has turned into a toxic mess.
Things are really starting to literally fall apart in bgsw crc! The I.T system is not fit for purpose and work is backing up as a result. Regularly waste an hour trying to get back on the raz network. Managers being moved around just when we need continuity and the latest! Office closure due to storm damage! What a bloody mess is all i can say.
ReplyDelete