Urgent ref transfer letters Feb 2019
Dear Napo Members
Most staff of the DDC BGSW Wales CRCs will have received their transfer of employment letters by today.
The document notifies you that should you sign an objection, and return within 5 days, you will become unemployed and retrospectively. This is neither lawful or an appropriate way to manage the situation that we all face in this time of critical change.
Within the document it specifically provides an agenda that they want to seek negotiations with the unions that effectively varies your contractual rights. These potential changes which we know already are less favourable conditions, claim to follow the Staff Transfer and Protections arrangements. In fact they do not and nor are the proposals in the spirit of the protective contractual agreement. Negotiated by National Napo General Secretary Ian Lawrence he will be concerned as to this premature immediate attempt to do staff down on protective terms. Especially following the appalling Working Links who tried to do just the same thing to us. (I will be writing shortly in conjunction with the General Secretaries response to Napo members on the situation of the unprecedented HMIP findings and the far too late removal of Working Links. The appalling untenable and disputed working model and the mendacity of the claimed workload indicator tool shortly.) Therefore NAPO SSW branch will not be in any position to support the transfer arrangements suggested agenda items signalled by the SEETEC transfer proposal as currently stated. The employer is a CRC not Seetec they do not have the authority to vary the collective national agreement, or suggest later on, post transfer date, that in fact you had accepted, or the Unions and Napo could relinquish any of your contractual or statutory rights.
To indicate an objection and then be dismissed as if you could do this is just an incredible bullying tactic. Seetec claim if you have objected a forfeit of many employment terms and statutory rights are lost. They cannot do this and an employment tribunal would be the arbiters of such claims. No one can sign away statutory rights. Their actual aim is to diminish your entitlements to your DDC redundancy policy, mobility, and direction protections, critical in our difficult geography and lack of clear estates strategy. Worse yet to come, working hours location and roles. Seetec offer all staff this potential trap, which is as worse, a position, on par with the appalling Working Links attempts to achieve the same.
Seetec should realise quickly the SSW Branch of Napo with our regional pan members, the General Secretary, and our combined efforts over 3 years to protect your posts, terms and conditions will not be lost in some cynical poorly constructed game playing, that they immediately started before speaking with the unions. Just more of the same it says loudly.
This agenda has not been agreed or presented to the Unions prior to placing the issues before you. No consultation on Pay and worse, fail to recognise pay is a national collective bargaining issue not branch. Napo negotiation team with Unison officials look at the current dispute issues and ensure appropriate contractual agreements remain fully protected. The agenda will be amended to reflect all local and national collective agreements and will remain in place and continue as is, post the point of transfer.
Napo SSW view is currently the comparisons to Working Links style of trickery or deceit is indistinguishable. If this is the start then things are set to get a lot worse in the future. Although we meet them as a team today, I will ensure Seetec have the opportunity to assure us this position of theirs is possibly a mistake and then perhaps we can move forwards productively on a much needed change agenda, once we get satisfactory assurance that they understand the national Staff Transfer Protections clauses that we will put to them.
Their suggestion to agree unknown terms or polices, and matters not negotiated from Seetec, to vary terms without consent or due procedures will trigger an immediate dispute.
I am sorry to report this early alert on week 1 of Seetec but their initial start still has some potential to be resolved. I will keep you posted.
Dino Peros
Napo SSW Branch Chair
Any chance of someone posting the letter sent by Seetec to Former Working links contract area?
ReplyDeleteWhat is the specific union advice regarding the letter?
ReplyDeleteFrom previous blog:
ReplyDelete"Sadly many people these days have the attention span of a goldfish, so the many twists & turns of the unscrupulous grifters are lost in the warm glow of their most recent missive. Its merely another PR stunt. Once the initial excitement & comforting hugs have faded there'll be shit sandwiches all round again."
Seetec: We love you, ex-WL staff. Come to mummy... but if you don't do as we say, you're for the CHOP!!!
"The document notifies you that should you sign an objection, and return within 5 days, you will become unemployed and retrospectively."
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwiN-b_2msbgAhWkSxUIHe3iARQQFjAAegQICxAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gov.uk%2Fgovernment%2Fuploads%2Fsystem%2Fuploads%2Fattachment_data%2Ffile%2F596842%2Ftr-national-agreement-19-12-13-final-amended-28114-attachment-to-nnc-and-sccog-circular-2-2014.doc&usg=AOvVaw13WjWX2jRvujYG198EQejD
(its the link to the staff transfer agreement)
14. Where a CRC is comprised of parts of more than one former Trust, the default position in the event of harmonisation will be to harmonise to the terms and conditions which are the most favourable to all staff e.g. mileage rates; special leave provisions.
Delete18. Where, as a direct consequence of the reorganisation, an employee suffers loss of earnings, s/he will receive protected pay on a mark time basis for a period of three years from the date of appointment to the new post or from whatever date the change takes effect.
22. The MoJ has confirmed that the sale of shares in the CRC to the new provider does not constitute a TUPE transfer of undertakings as there is no change of employer, merely a change of ownership of the shares in the employer company. Following the share sale, the employer will continue to be the CRC and the relationship between the employer, recognised trade unions and employees is unchanged. Existing NNC and SCCOG National Agreements on Pay and Conditions of Service will therefore continue to be the terms and conditions for all staff.
DeleteReminds me of the letter sent by our CEO when Trusts were shafting staff to NPS or CRC - if you objected to your allocation he would regard it as you submitting your resignation. Napo did Sweet FA about that. I do hope there's a more robust & supportive response for ex-WL colleagues.
ReplyDeleteNothing the ex WL employees are not protected. End of. All staff appointed before the date stated are fully protected. Napo take note and do your role.
DeleteYes I wish I hadn't signed my new contract and taken my chance through tribunal as usual no guidance from napo or of them putting a test case through the court.
DeleteHaving destroyed the probation service, the Tories are now proposing more robust community sentences whilst at the same time our leaders are bullying co-Ercing, demanding and directing staff into prisons.
ReplyDeleteYou couldn’t make it up.
Hang your heads in shame and go now!
"In thinking strategically about the future of our justice system I believe in the end there is a strong case for switching resource away from ineffective prison sentences and into probation."
DeleteDavid Gauke, 18/2/19
NAPO - Don't waste one second and get this outrageous proposal of Seetec's to an industrial tribunal right now and stop it in it's tracks. Once you register the case with the tribunal then Seetec cannot proceed and staff can rest more easily until the outcome is known. Furthermore, Ian Lawrence should be knocking David Gauke's door down at the MoJ and demanding to know why the Working Links areas were just handed to Seetec without any form of competition and insisting on the truth as to whether the MoJ knew what Seetec were planning. For how much longer can the staff be abused before someone takes a real stand? I am in no position to do anything as I was made redundant in the early days of the French caterers taking over our Trust.
ReplyDeleteThe WL situation has been known about since Nov'18, if not before. Dino & local activists have been fighting tooth-and-nail for employee rights. All that seems to have happened is that Napo tried to sideline Dino. At whose request? HMPPS?
DeleteMaybe this is *The Test* that proves how much of a hold NOMS/HMPPS might have over the NAPO GS, and whose side he's on...?
He is on his own side but tries to smhmooze in power circles. His basic incompetence is masked by his double dealing agreements to shaft members remember the lack of any residence to tr.
DeleteProfit, profit and more profit
ReplyDeleteOk people so what about the money WLinks have stolen from their probationer clients. Living outside the city entitles the probationer to travel expenses, bus/petrol etc. (I daresay WLinks and tier CRCs embezzled this money from the government without passing it on)
ReplyDeleteSo who do they now make a claim against? The CRC now being run by Seetec, the administrators of WLinks? Arailius? or who?
Answers on a postcard pls
OR
Are most of you viewing this complicit in defrauding offenders of their travel expenses?