CMG 2012 Leicester Employee Relations Informal Meeting

PCS reps met with the centre manager on Friday 13 March 2015 to discuss a number of issues.

Complaints  These were handled by Plymouth but we are setting up a Leicester/Dudley team with 2.83 WTE EOs from Leicester. It will be HEO managed via Dudley .
Pledges
The centre manager met Gail Adams, the National People lead. As a result of the feelings of staff and PCS's representations, pledges are to cease. They will be replaced with business focused buzz meetings.

People OMT Paper re one to ones
There is to be a pilot to set up a roll out of effective one to ones. It is recognised they are often not happening and when they do, they are not necessarily effective. The centre manager has offered to trial the project in Leicester. This will attract some support with the delivery . Hopefully, this will help some to have their issues addressed.

Optimisation Checks We have had a few visits from a team to examine how the guidance and processes work in practice .

They have been pleased with the suggestions put forward by staff here. They are not the compliance checks that were expected.

Overtime This was offered at short notice for a period up to the end of April to anyone who had done 37 hours work for the week. This is to support the business to be in the best place in preparation for the case closure work to increase and the new 2012 sites coming on board. We didn’t ask about costs but presumably it will be paid for by the hordes of leavers from Newcastle, Walsall and ourselves (about 60).

Telephones 
They are looking at the reasons why some individuals and teams appear to get more calls  than others . There may be some suggested movement of staff on non-benefit teams where they cannot take calls to balance out the numbers. We offered to help consider job designs.

Late Shift Rotas 
Reviews should be in by next Monday . Most indicate wanting to stay with the day that they have.
The centre manager said that they will be as flexible as possible.

Car park moves in official  time

There were still some issues to be agreed  to finally resolve this issue.

PCS National President in Leicester

The PCS National President was in Leicester today speaking at an event organised by the Leicester HMRC branch. Solidarity to sacked rep Candy Udwin & the striking National Gallery workers.


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Branch AGM 2

Thanks to everyone who came, we had about 100 people there.

The food was great and our hardship fund has been boosted.

Special thanks to the speakers (I know I was one of them) particularly our (virtual) special guest speaker, Mark Serwotka.

We are now set to kick on with our new merged branch and to work for our members.

The names of the reps who were elected will be posted on this blog and this is the place to come for updates, local stories, reports of negotiations and how to get help with a personal case.

Branch AGM

The meeting is really packed. We're having to put out more chairs as it's standing room only.


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CMG Leicester ER Informal

PCS met with the Centre Manager on 19/02/15 to discuss the numerous issues raised in the centre.

It was a very constructive meeting that clarified a number of the points raised by members and PCS representatives.

Business changes

Management will issue a further communication.

We agreed to discuss Plan, Commit, Deliver pledging with the Area Director.

8-8

A full review of the late shift and Saturday working will take place.

It was agreed that staff can move cars to the site car park in official time when working late.

Annual Leave

There continues to be an issue regarding the week commencing 13/07/15. We put forward the view that this year’s situation is unique as Eid clashes with the first two weeks of school holidays.

We had raised this in our initial discussions about the compulsory transfer when asking about the Equality Impact Assessment.

There will be an announcement very shortly.

Performance

A useful discussion about appraisals putting this year’s into context with the change in business disciplines to CMG. This included an understanding of the use of PIPs and how they are managed with an acknowledgement that there needs to be an agreed plan to support staff to achieve any improvements.

Reducing Stress update

We have arranged a number of sessions with Union Learn. The advert will go out next week, and we are jointly committed to consider producing site and team plans.

Over 150 staff talked to us at the Time to Talk event. Hopefully this may have given some staff assurances that support is available and to have the conversation with managers, colleagues or reps.

 

Martin Foreman

PCS Takes Leading Role in Local Trade Union Movement

Leicester and District Trades Union Council (L&DTUC) is the local body of the Trades Union Congress and has affiliates from most major trade unions including Unite, Unison and GMB. It represents both workers in the public and private sector.    

Our branch of PCS is affiliated and we have been a leading union branch in the organisation for some time.

This was recognised at the AGM last night, 19 February 2015 when Chris Willars was elected President, Tony Church was elected Secretary and Noel Corry was elected acting Assistant Treasurer.

I believe that this shows the trust and belief in our branch by the trade union movement in Leicester and Leicestershire.

We will continue to push to make the L&DTUC into an effective voice for the trade union movement locally.

WSD CEG ER Formal

PCS from across the area met with management for Work Services in the Central England Group yesterday, 19 February 2015.

Although we are now meeting monthly there are still problems with no agendas, action points or decisions from the last meeting available until just before the meeting and therefore we don't know what we are supposed to be discussing and with who. We discussed this and hopefully this will improve in future.

We discussed attendance management and management assured us that the policy must be followed and there is no automatic referral to a decision maker after 28 days of continuous absence. If this is happening we need to know and the CEG HRBP will look at cases where this happens or any other case where policy has been ignored. The stress group will also be reactivated to investigate levels of stress and to try and come up with ways to reduce it.

Equality and diversity statistics for last years box markings are now available.  The format makes the figures difficult to understand and it is a long time since the end of year.  Hopefully we can get figures earlier this reporting year.

Universal Credit rollout is starting in CEG.  We have dates for tranche 1 & 2.  There then follows a pause so the pressure on releasing staff for training during peak summer leave is less than it could have been.  Management are keen to honour the commitment to two continuous weeks leave in the summer for all staff who want it. Leave levels of 18-20% is the guideline as a starting point for all sites in CEG. If this is not the case in your office or agreed leave is cancelled we need to know.

We then discussed staffing.  We do not know the figures for next year yet but the VES exercise and band B to C progression will have a significant impact on band B numbers in particular.  We should be getting more meaningful staffing figures in future to inform our discussions.

We discussed ESA claimants.  We were assured that segmentation should take place and a strong message that claimants should be rung first to ensure that they were suitable and they knew why they were being invited in.