What is it all about?

There's overwhelming evidence that companies work best when they inform and consult their employees effectively. Information and Consultation means:

• You can make the company better to work for by influencing decisions and so improving morale, motivation and staff retention.
• Employees can act as a counter-weight to the short-term pressures on senior management.
• Employees have a mass of knowledge that can be tapped to make the company function better.
• If you understand your employer's goals, strategies, organisation and plans then you can help achieve its commercial goals.

"Fujitsu Voice" is the company's new body for informing and consulting UK employees. It is based on a Charter which was negotiated by elected reps, including many union members who made an important contribution to the process. Unlike the constitution of the old UK Consultative Forum (UKCF), which Fujitsu Voice replaces, the Fujitsu Voice Charter is legally enforceable, which will help ensure that the company sticks to it. Fujitsu Voice should be better than the old UKCF in many other respects, particularly the ability of reps to communicate freely and directly with their constituents.

For more information, see the Fujitsu Voice collaboration site on CafeVIK.

If employees elect a good group or reps, Fujitsu Voice can make a real difference, and help make Fujitsu a great place to work.

Who do the unions recommend we vote for?

Fujitsu Voice constituencies are based on Professional Communities.

Unite has worked together with the PCS union, which also has members in Fujitsu, to identify candidates who can attract wide support from employees. They are a mix in terms of role, seniority, geography, gender etc., and are all committed to make Fujitsu Voice as effective as possible.

Unite and PCS are encouraging employees to support the following candidates (click on name for more details):

On the old UK Consultative Forum (UKCF), the reps worked together regardless of whether they happened to be union members. However, if the company ignores employees' concerns, reps who are not union members have few options. They can't turn to a union-funded solicitor for advice. How could they launch and fund legal action, if that was necessary? Specialist legal advice can be extremely expensive (e.g. how would the Pensions Forum have coped recently without UNITE involvement?). Staff will get better results if the Fujitsu Voice and union structures work together in close co-operation, rather than allowing the company to divide and conquer.

How do the elections work?

Voting is expected to open on Wednesday 15th September, and to run to at least 5pm 13th October. Please vote as soon as you can, to avoid misplacing the official details you need to cast your vote.

The election is by Single Transferable Vote (STV) - see http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=48 if you want to know more. The key thing is that you have to place the candidates in order of preference - 1 or top being your favourite. Please put the union-backed candidate(s) top of your list in any order you like, then vote for as many or few of the other candidates as you want.

The company’s rules for the election prohibit the use of corporate email distribution lists, posters or fliers in the workplace to promote particular candidates. Whatever your views on these rules, please ensure you comply.

How important is Fujitsu Voice?

An Information & Consultation body like Fujitsu Voice has an important remit. It must be consulted over a wide range of issues including:

1. Changes to employment contracts, terms and conditions and working practices
2. Pay, benefits and pensions
3. Redundancies and TUPE transfers
4. Company strategy including mergers, acquisitions and divestments
5. Equal Opportunities
6. Training and Development
7. Health and Safety
8. Environmental concerns
9. Organisational changes

For the vast majority of employees (who aren't yet covered by union recognition) Fujitsu Voice will be the primary formal channel to raise and address issues of concern other than raising an individual grievance.

At the very least, fujitsu Voice can bypass some of the barriers to communication within Fujitsu.

Fujitsu Voice won't change the way Fujitsu works overnight. However, the unions and other employee forums have been building up pressure for less secrecy, and for more democracy and accountability at work. Making Fujitsu Voice as effective as possible is another step along this road. The fact that Fujitsu Voice is on a firmer legal footing than the old UKCF means that the company will find it harder to ignore. We need a strong team of reps to ensure this opportunity isn't wasted.

Why now?

For many years, Fujitsu used the UK Consultative Forum (UKCF) to try to inform and consult employees. The Employee Representatives on the UKCF were elected to represent all staff.

On occasion, the UKCF played an important role, but the company wasn't committed to making it work, prevented reps communicating effectively with constituents, and bypassed the UKCF over issues that were of great importance to employees. Last year this came to a head after the company failed to consult the UKCF about the pay freeze, its strategy to exit all the Defined Benefit pension schemes, or the redundancy programme.

In a statement from the UKCF Employee Representatives Committee on 3rd September 2009, all the Employee Reps resigned, asking for immediate elections in which a number would "seek re-election on the basis of a mandate from our constituents to take whatever action is necessary to make the UKCF more effective". The company failed to organise the elections, so the UKCF reps then issued a second statement on 22nd October 2009 in which they gave notice to terminate the existing UKCF agreement, calling for a new body to be set up. "This new body would be better able to represent employees effectively because it would have a firmer legal footing by not operating as a "Pre-Existing Agreement" in the terms of the legislation". The reps offered to negotiate this change, but instead the company unilaterally initiated elections to a Negotiating Group which they would negotiate with instead. The response from the UKCF reps on 26th January 2010 is in a third statement.

The Negotiating Group have delivered a Fujitsu Voice Charter which meets much of what the UKCF reps hoped for when they resigned. Now the negotiations are over and we have to elect reps to Fujitsu Voice itself to make it work as effectively as possible.

Limitations

No matter how good our reps are, there will still be limits to what Fujitsu Voice can do for staff and the company. It will be a body for "Information and Consultation of Employees".

Fujitsu Voice can't:

• Take decisions instead of the senior management team
• Negotiate with the company to reach agreements on behalf of employees
• Provide representation for employees over individual issues
• Replace the normal communication channels in the company

UNITE is supporting Fujitsu Voice because such bodies help every employee to have a say over issues affecting their future. But for employees to have a really effective voice, we need more than information and consultation. We need independent organisation, negotiation, and campaigning. Fujitsu Voice can be useful, but it doesn't remove the need for effective trade union organisation.

Please join UNITE if you're not a member yet.