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July 30, 2008
THE QUESTIONNAIRE - DO NOT RESPOND
Napo members are being asked to complete the consultation questionnaire and include your name, location, ECU and parking status. Individual members completing this questionnaire, we are advised, could be compromising their employment rights because the questionnaires are not anonymised.
The questionnaire has been sent out with your payslips. If you currently receive ECU, but do not do 1500 miles a year, please look at your take home pay and deduct £200 as this is what we calculate you could lose, given the proposals in the document.
We are therefore advising all Napo members not to respond to the questionnaire from the chief officer, Barrie Crook, by dutifully answering the points it seeks your responses to. The chief officer is seeking to undermine the role of the recognised trade unions with his questionnaire. It was never raised with the unions, never mind discussed.
This is not the proper way to consult with members of unions. HPA does not have a distinguished record in looking after the codes and conditions of staff. You should recall the chief officer’s response to the failure to pay increments. He said the pay deal had come to an end. He did not support or wish to honour the immediate payment of increments.
On ECU we negotiated with HPA and consulted with members. We reached an agreement and within days HPA was watering it down. Now you are told you are better off than other areas. Don’t you believe it! We have collated a lot of information from Napo branches in other areas and the picture painted by the chief officer is in his own colours and from his own perspective. For example, there are areas that retain ECU, including Surrey; there have been buy outs, including one area that paid £3000 to each ECU holder.
The current 500 miles threshold in our area was put forward by Barrie Crook himself and only came into effect six months ago. He now talks about 1500 miles – it could be any amount, but if he does not like it, despite any agreement, he will try to change it, as he has with the existing agreement.
The consultation paper mentions historic mileage (ECU entitlement is calculated on previous years mileage) - this was put forward by Christine Straw, management’s negotiator. As for the two tier system this is not part of the agreement, which has been implemented in such a way in order to create a two tier system. The two tier system was created by Christine Straw and Barrie Crook and it is this that the unions have been making representations against.
And don’t believe that HPA has a gifted approach to consultation. Remember the integration of unpaid work? Some of you may have individual experiences of how HPA approaches consultation. Barrie Crook cites a Unison grievance in his paper about two tiers. In fact we have a members’ grievance on the bigger issue of consultation at the moment.
On an issue that is fundamentally about your level of income, ask yourself: who can I trust to best represent my interests? The Unions or HPA?
And how do the unions represent? We consult with members and then we take our mandate and represent the interest’s of members through negotiations with the employer. We look to get the best outcome we can. We can ask HPA searching questions about their spending priorities and whether HPA has the best staffing configuration for supporting frontline staff. Are there other savings that could be made in other parts of the service? Are some parts of HPA bloated, top heavy?
It is all very well for HPA to beguile with ‘consultation’ but watch out if they seek to claim that a 20-30% response rate to the questionnaire is representative and therefore justifies their proposed actions. This is not the open and transparent exercise it may appear.
Napo members are seeing their terms and conditions cut in HPA. Yes, there are national forces at work but do not overlook the differences that local management can make in terms of ameliorating impacts. There may well be arguments that HPA could have done more in times of plenty, instead of spending tens of thousands on management consultants, controlling software, rebranding and logos.
We say to our membership: do not give a Trojan horse of a questionnaire a mandate. Reject it and trust in your elected representatives – and try your best to attend the next branch meeting on Friday 22nd August at Town Quay when we are sure there will be more to be said on the subject of cuts. And they are cuts – to use euphemisms like efficiency savings is insulting.
“Sorry, I can’t pay my ever-increasing bills – on the grounds of efficiency savings! “
Posted by Hampshire at July 30, 2008 02:36 PM