The company has come up with an extra date for negotiations, and we've now proposed a timetable to them for concluding an agreement. The main points in our proposal are:
Week beginning 2nd Feb
* More work on uncontroversial aspects of drafts
* Thursday 5 Feb: Negotiations to get drafts fit to circulate except for major outstanding issues. Prepare clear definition of outstanding issues.
* Circulate drafts and list of outstanding issues to staff
Week beginning 9 Feb
* Tuesday 10 Feb: EGM covering our negotiations, pay claim, pensions
* Wednesday 11 Feb: Negotiations on the major outstanding issues. Also deal with any issues/comments raised by members in response to the circulation of drafts and the EGM. Produce formal offer from the company.
* Circulate offer to members, with electronic voting
Week beginning 16 Feb
* Monday/Tuesday: Surgeries for employees to ask reps questions etc about the offer
* Wednesday 18 Feb - voting closes
* Sign agreement, or get together to work out how to respond to its rejection
This isn't yet all agreed, but the negotiation dates are fixed. Good (but time-consuming) progress continues on the draft agreements.
We hear that Knowledgepool, the former training arm of ICL which was sold off to Tomanet, has now gone into administration. Employees made redundant in the recent past had already faced difficulties extracting their redundancy payments from the company. Employees are naturally concerned for their futures. The case highlights the dangers of being "TUPE" transferred to another company if it doesn't have the resources to make it viable.
The TUC have highlighted the growing problems caused by employees coming into work while ill:
http://www.tuc.org.uk/h_and_s/tuc-7528-f0.cfm
We have requested information from the company to begin our discussion on the April pay review. The context for these discussions will be the understanding reached as a result of our dispute last year.
We expect every employee within the Amicus collective bargaining unit to get a pay rise in April 2004, excluding those regarded as being unsatisfactory performers (i.e. those whose performance is being managed via the Conduct or Capability Policy) or those who are aware that they are 'red-circled' (which can occur when an employee has knowingly transferred to a less demanding role where his or her pay is significantly higher than others doing a similar job at a comparable level of competence and performance).
The initial stages of our talks will be led by Phil Tepper and Sulayman Munir. You can help them by telling them what you want to see in our pay claim. We'll also be discussing this in more detail at our General Meeting in the next couple of weeks.
The context for our pay claim is much more positive than in recent years. Fujitsu Services has won some important major contracts, which will mean more pressure on the company to retain staff. In the wider industry, it appears that worst of the slow-down may be near an end. Analysts Gartner published a set of new year resolutions for company Chief Information Officers, under the heading "Just cutting the IT budget again is the wrong tactic for 2004". They went on to say:
"Vital technology skills will be in short supply as economic growth quickens during 2004. Now is the time to identify and take measures to retain IT staff with business-critical skills that will be restless after the period of pay restraint. Part of this assessment could include unexpected pay rises to crucial staff"
Where cash is tight, some employers are looking at rewards other than simple pay rises. This doesn't just have to mean offering bonuses instead, which is often seen as a fiddle to cut costs, as bonuses are worth much less than pay rises. Some employers are looking to improve other benefits, offering increased annual leave, sabbaticals etc.
In 2003, we were successful in winning Sick Pay from day one for helpdesk staff who had previously been denied it. What would you like to see in our claim for 2004?
Thanks to everyone who took part in the survey, which has proved helpful for our negotiators. Your reps are working with the company on a timetable to bring this long-running dispute to a conclusion.
Updates on the negotiations to resolve the dispute are being posted regularly to our web site at:
http://www.ourunion.org.uk/icl/FJSdispute.
We will be using the General Meeting in the next couple of weeks to present an offer from the company, and to hold the prize draw for those who completed the survey.
Current Fujitsu Services employees who are members of the company's Defined Benefit (final salary) pension scheme should have seen the announcements about the company's proposal for changes to the scheme. Employees at MAN05 who are paid less than £35,836 are represented on the company's UK Pensions Consultative Forum (UKPCF) through Amicus, and Dave Francis has been the rep involved.
Dave would welcome the views of members on the proposals. We intend to hold a General Meeting in the next couple of weeks, and pensions will be a major item on the agenda.
We had already planned that pensions would be the major item on the agenda of the next meeting of the Amicus Greater Manchester IT Branch:
6pm-7:30pm, Thursday 5 February
Upstairs, Hare & Hounds pub, Shudehill, Manchester city centre, M4 4AA
(near Shudehill tram stop)
The guest speaker will be none other than Dave Francis, so bring along your questions. All branch members are encouraged to attend.
Thursday and Friday were spent on a "walkthrough" of the draft agreements, to make sure people who hadn't been involved in the negotiations could understand them, to spot any mistakes, and to check that no points had been missed out from earlier versions.
To our disappointment, this proved quite fruitful. However, the checking did not throw up any major issues.
All the comments have been collected together, and we hope to incorporate or reject them over the next week.
We're still hopeful that a well-crafted "offer" can be circulated to members in the next few weeks.
Another day of negotiations today, and more progress made.
Today's talks concentrated on two of the three draft agreements - the "settlement" document and the union recognition agreement.
A big thankyou to the (over 100) members who completed our survey. This has already proved useful in the negotiations. We'll be holding the prize draw in the next few days.
There are still a few significant unresolved issues, but agreement does seem possible.
We also discussed a timetable for completing the negotiations.
We'll be having a "walkthrough" of the draft agreements on 22-23 January, to check they're comprehensible to reps and HR people who haven't been directly involved in the negotiations, and to identify any points which have been accidentally missed out during the editing process.
We hope to circulate draft agreements to members, and then hold an Extraordinary General Meeting during the week beginning 2nd February. We'd then collate comments from members, make any final changes, and put the company's offer to a vote of members so that it could be signed by 20 February.
Were you or a colleague made redundant (compulsory or voluntary) by ICL in the 2001-2 redundancy programme?
[section deleted for confidentiality reasons]
Background information on the cases is available here: http://www.ourunion.org.uk/icl/news2002.htm#asre1809. Since then, the dates for the hearings have been changed:
Note that not all the individual cases are being heard in May, as Amicus and the company agreed that a set of "test cases" should be heard. Hopefully the remainder of the cases can be settled out of court once the test cases have been decided.
Last Friday (16th Jan) we had negotiations which covered all the dispute documentation. We spent a good deal of time on clarifying, rewording and resolving the smaller issues, and updating the documents on-line within the meeting. Good progress was made and the list of outstanding issues is now down to a handful of larger issues.
We reported back on the progress of the survery of members' contracts (which closed on the 16th Jan) and gave some initial feedback. We are intending to analyse the full results and present them to the company at the next negotiation meeting on Wednesday, for discussion.
We also suggested providing a timetable and list of tasks that need to be achieved to bring the negotiations to a close and to aim to settle the dispute.
We have produced a first draft of this and sent it to the company and are now awaiting their response.
We are still waiting for the company to announce its proposal for changes to the final salary (defined benefit) pension scheme, which the majority of employees are in. The announcement that the consultation period is being extended is welcome. We had expected to know how much the company aimed to save before any proposals for how they proposed to make the savings. We still don't know this figure. The delay gives employees more opportunity to consider the company proposals (as well as extending the period before any worsening of the scheme).
Once the proposals are made, the company may ask employees to sign new contracts or changes to their terms and conditions. Amicus ALWAYS recommends that employees seek advice from their union before accepting any such changes.
Our next Amicus branch meeting will be on the subject of pensions, and the speaker will be Dave Francis, one of our reps on the company's UK Pensions Consultative Forum (UKPCF).
6pm-7:30pm
Thursday 5 February 2004
Upstairs, Hare & Hounds pub, Shudehill, M4 4AA
(near Shudehill tram stop)
There will be time for questions and discussion. All branch members are encouraged to attend.
Following Wahid Iqbal leaving MAN05, the reps committee has co-opted Alan Child to fill one of the vacancies on the reps committee. He will be focussing on a set of issues around flexible working, mobility and utilisation, which are of increasing concern to members.
Don't forget this important meeting tomorrow.
Our branch is supporting an important local initiative to counter the threat of racism and fascism (particularly the BNP) in the region. A launch event for "Manchester Against Racism" is being held:
7pm, Thursday 15th January, Manchester Town Hall
Speakers include:
Billy Hayes (CWU General Secretary), Tony Lloyd MP (whose constituency includes MAN05), Councillor Afzal Khan (Muslim Council of Britain), Councillor M Azam (Coalition against Racism), Julie Hesmondalgh ("Hayley" from Coronation Street), Father Gregory Hallam (St Aidan's Orthodox Church), Weyman Bennett (Joint Secretary, Unite against Fascism), Henry Guterman MBE (refugee from the Nazis), plus speakers from the world of football, an asylum seeker, music and poetry.
For more information, see http://www.manchester-against-racism.com
Members are encouraged to attend.
The next meeting with management is on Friday. A key tool for our reps will be the results of our survey of MAN05 and HOM99 based members. If you haven't completed this survey yet, please do so by the end of this week. The email giving details of the survey was sent out individually on 9th December.
Don't forget:
a) If you don't complete the survey, your reps won't be able to take into account your circumstances in the negotiations.
b) There will be a prize draw next week, and everyone who completed the survey will be entered. There will be two £25 prizes.
A report from the last negotiation meeting is on our weblog:
http://www.ourunion.org.uk/icl/FJSdispute
We are getting nearer an agreement, but there are still a few important (and contentious) issues outstanding. As with any negotiation - nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
The last negotiation meeting held before Christmas took place on the 22nd of December. Issues on the Recognition agreement were discussed, and dates were agreed for the negotiation meetings for January 2004.
Both parties also agreed that it was time to start thinking about setting a deadline to resolve the handful of outstanding issues and try to agree a settlement for the dispute. This will be discussed in the negotiation meeting to be held on the 16th January.
The first negotiation meeting after the Christmas holidays took place on the 7th January to discuss the Redundancy agreement. Many of the smaller issues and issues of clarity were resolved and the main issues will be discussed on the 16th January, once we have the reults of the survey that members were recently asked to complete. The company also reported on the progress of the new pay review (Reward) system and are now ready to start the 2004 pay negotiations within the next 2 weeks, as a separate negotiation from the current dispute negotiations.
The next negotiation meeting took place today (8th January). The main topic of discussion was the Recognition agreement, where we resolved some of the smaller issues and agreed that one of the major outstanding issues should be removed from the Recognition agreement and added into the Settlement agreement instead. The main outstanding issues on this now are in the Legal Status of parts of the agreement.
The next negotiation meeting will be on Friday 16th January and the Redundancy agreement will be the main topic for discussion.