The Amicus negotiating team believe we had reached the basis of an fair settlement with the company. Over the last few days, all the issues left outstanding from Wednesday's negotiations have been resolved. However, HR have reversed their stance on one issue this week, and a further meeting this morning has left it outstanding.
The outstanding issue relates to a small group of employees who joined the company in the last few years, and whose contracts include the clause:
"Any other severance payments to which you are entitled at the end of your employment will be calculated in accordance with current terms on contract termination, which are subject to change from time to time. This is currently the ICL management severance payments scheme"
There is no doubt which terms applied to these people when they signed their contracts. The company are not claiming that they have notified these people of any change since.
This had been discussed in November, and the company had confirmed in writing that this would be treated as an "Express" contract term, and the company would not apply the statutory minimum redundancy payments to this group.
Just as we were on the brink of recommending an offer to members, the company are now saying that the letter in November was mistaken, and that these people are not entitled to management grade terms after all.
It's clear from our survey that we have members with this contract clause, and they believe they are entitled to M-grade terms. One of the general principles agreed with the company early in the negotiations was that we shouldn't be changing people's redundancy terms - just clarifying them.
We believe the group of people affected by this issue is relatively small, so the company can't justify its new position on cost grounds. However, the implications for individuals are serious.
We have asked the company to reconsider their position on this point.
Our timetable had included an offer from the company going out to the vote by "the end of the week".
Wednesday's talks made good progress, but despite carrying on until well after 9pm, six issues remained unresolved. We now know the company position on three of them, but they tell us that they need the weekend to resolve all the rest.
Once we've seen the company's stance on these remaining issues, the negotiating team will need to assess whether the balance of the six points is good enough to recommend the deal to members.
In short, "the end of the week" appears to have slipped from Friday to Monday.