No, this isn't an article about the Manchester Move - this is the Amicus CafeVIK Community. When we set this up, we didn't know what the name of the union would be, hence the cryptic name. From 30 December the "MAN05 Union" CafeVIK Community will be renamed "Amicus The Union".
The latest edition of "Amicus The Magazine" is currently being sent out to members. In the envelope you'll find your new membership card. This includes your membership number, which will have changed. Since the merger of MSF and AEEU to form Amicus, the union has been merging its various systems, including membership.
Please keep your membership card safe.
Employees should now have been invited by the company to complete the employee opinion survey (called the "Reflecting Survey").
As always, we encourage employees to take the opportunity to express their feelings -f it helps put employee feelings to senior management then it's a good use of your time.
Alongside union organisation, Fujitsu Services employees have representation though various “forums”. The two key forums for general issues are the Fujitsu Services Consultative Forum or FSCF (which covers the whole company) and the UK Consultative Forum or UKCF (which covers the UK only).
Both forums have recently published minutes of their last meetings – take a look.
The voting timetable for the UKCF elections was extended in certain areas, due to some employees not receiving voting details. Today is the last day of voting, and we hope to have the results soon.
Stress, repetitive strain injuries (RSI) and back strains are the top three health hazards facing UK workers and the problems are getting worse, with employers still failing to protect their staff from ill health or serious injury, according to a report published by the TUC:
http://www.tuc.org.uk/h_and_s/tuc-9059-f0.cfm
Age discrimination is a big issue, and is the subject of new legislation giving employees new rights.
It’s also the main topic for the next meeting of the Amicus Greater Manchester IT Branch:
6pm-7:30pm, Thursday 2nd December
Upstairs, Hare & Hounds pub, Shudehill, Manchester city centre, M4 4AA
(near Shudehill Metrolink station and the spiral ramp to the Arndale car park)
As well as the usual reports and discussion on workplace and union issues, the main theme of the meeting will be a discussion about the new legislation on age discrimination:
Derek Wise (branch secretary) will lead a discussion on "The young and old: are there rights they should not have?"
All branch members are encouraged to attend.
Though the March 2004 MAN05 pay deal marked a significant step forward, members are already aware that it has since been dogged by slow and incomplete implementation by the company.
There are two key issues still outstanding:
1) Remapping. The company changed the Professional Community “role codes” for many employees, which has a knock-on effect on their pay & benefits progression. In many cases this was done without the knowledge of the employees, let alone their consent. The company had agreed to write to each individual telling them what had happened and giving them the opportunity to appeal.
2) Helpdesk shortfalls. The company unilaterally decided to use “special” helpdesk pay scales instead of the ones referred to in the agreement. The impact of this has been to deny many helpdesk staff the benefit of “shortfall plans”. Elsewhere in the MAN05 collective bargaining unit staff have been benefiting from pay rises as part of these plans, which will ensure that nobody remains below the bottom of their 2003 pay scale.
This issue doesn’t just matter for those who might have lost out directly – it affects every employee. What value does any agreement with an employer have if they think they can pick and choose which bits to honour?
To put pressure on the company, Amicus launched a petition, and we want as many MAN05 staff as possible to sign it. Thanks to all of you for your hard work this week collecting signatures – please keep up the good work in your own work areas. The next stage will include some lunchtime petitioning between 12 and 2 on Thursday and Friday. Please email Chris Morton or Zahid Ramzan if you can spare a little time to help with this. Petition forms are available from CafeVIK or from the union office (m.f1a, upstairs, phase 2).
Up to date news on the dispute is being circulated to members by email.
Some of this material is also appearing on the general "news" section of this site.
Thanks to all the members who attended today's MAN05 Extraordinary General Meeting.
Members heard and discussed reports on a range of issues, some of which are reported below.
2004 Pay deal
Amicus launched a petition calling on the company to honour the 2004 MAN05 pay agreement. The company is currently breaking the agreement by excluding helpdesk staff from the "shortfall plans" intended to bring all employees up to the bottom of the (2003) pay scale. You can read the pay agreement or download the petition on our "MAN05 Union" CafeVIK community.
Pay survey
Reps also reported that the Amicus national survey of Fujitsu Services pay had been a great success, with 648 responses in total - despite the company censoring the link to the survey from our CafeVIK community. The work of analysing the results will now begin, and information on how to access the results will be posted on the survey home page. Thanks to all the members and non-members who took part.
Sex attacks
The issue of the sex-attacks in the West Gorton area continues to cause concern, particularly after a member of MAN05 staff was attacked. Reps reported constructive discussions with the company about ways of improving safety for female staff. Amicus had made a number of suggestions, including paying for taxis to/from safe places, increasing security, escorting people to bus stops etc. The company are looking into these ideas - in the meantime any female member of staff who needs help should ask for it. The taxi idea was accepted as a sensible quickly-implementable idea. Employees should approach their managers in the first instance for approval. The company also intend to look at pairing people up when leaving the site, lift shares etc.
UKCF elections
Members were reminded to use their vote in the current UKCF elections - voting closes soon. See http://www.ourunion.org.uk/ukcf.htm for more information.
Decisions
Members agreed the following unanimously:
Motion 1: Dispute
We welcome the re-opening of negotiations to resolve last year’s dispute over union recognition, redundancy, redeployment and related issues.
We remind the company that we agreed to defer the implementation of our 2003 pay claim into 2004 in exchange for good agreements on recognition and redundancy. We reaffirm our determination to ensure the company delivers on their part of this deal. We are not prepared to see our rights or organisation undermined.
We are disappointed that the company did not take up any of the “reassuring steps” we proposed at our EGM in August, which were aimed at building confidence that the company was genuinely seeking a settlement. However, we note that the company has now begun to explore with our reps one of these ideas – agreeing that existing agreements will cover the new site if new agreements have not been reached by the time of the relocation.
We are disappointed that the company has once again begun breaking our existing agreements by:
a) Trying to refuse members union representation in individual matters (e.g. negotiating Compromise Agreements)
b) Failing to consult Amicus over changes which result in employees losing their current jobs and being forcibly redeployed
c) Failing to hold meetings to discuss collective grievances
d) Pressing ahead with changes without hearing grievances first
e) Unilaterally deciding not to implement the March 2004 pay agreement fully for helpdesk staff
f) Threatening to stop talking to Amicus over any issue
g) Threatening reps with disciplinary action for carrying out their duties
We instruct our reps to ensure that the following issues are high on the agenda for the next negotiating meetings:
1. Agreeing how the company will honour the existing agreements while they remain in force
2. Agreeing how the existing agreements and arrangements are extended to cover the new site until new ones are agreed
3. Agreeing how the company will raise issues of concern without immediately resorting to bullying and threats
4. Agreeing how the company can ensure these agreements are “on behalf of the company”, apply to everyone covered, and cannot be rescinded without due notice
5. Agreeing effective joint communication of these agreements to employees
We believe that these measures would create confidence among employees that the process was moving in the right direction. This would relieve the pressure we currently find ourselves under to consider returning to industrial action to defend employee rights.
If our reps are unable to reach agreement on these issues quickly (by the end of 2004 at the latest), we instruct our reps and officers to step up preparations for any campaign that might prove necessary.
Motion 2: Regrading/remapping
The company has used Professional Community “role codes” to identify employees with similar capabilities for a number of years. Each code was associated with a “role profile” document which described it.
Up to and including 2003, the company used research to create benchmark pay data (pay scales) reflecting the external market rate for the job described by each role profile. In 2004, the company chose not to do this, but to compare each employee with the median pay of the Fujitsu Services UK employees with the same role code.
Well into the 1990s, the union was able to publish the pay scales, and the company sometimes chose to publish them too. Up until the creation of the 2003 scales, employees still had access on request to the pay scales directly relevant for them. Since then, the company has become even more secretive about pay.
A change in the text of a “role profile” can affect the market rate figures that research would produce by making the job “bigger” or “smaller”.
Moving an employee from one role code to another can affect their pay and career prospects. It can result in an employee’s pay being compared with a different group of colleagues, who are paid better or worse. When the company is using externally benchmarked pay scales, it can result in different pay scales applying.
In spring 2003 the company broke up the old Engineering Professional Community. This resulted in most employees being “remapped” to new role codes. In a large minority of cases the “mapping” was non-standard i.e. the new was not comparable with the old. In many cases the employee was not even told. Because individual employees had no access to pay scales, they couldn’t tell if they had been effectively promoted or demoted, even if they knew their code had changed.
Since then, many other employees have been “remapped”, and some employees have had their role codes changed a number of times.
The company has also been shifting from allocating role codes based on employee capabilities, to allocating role codes based on the job. Though we support the principle of relating pay and benefits more closely to the job, this does raise significant issues such as:
Since 2003 Amicus reps and other employee representatives have been calling on the company to review “remapping” to sort out the problems created. The March 2004 MAN05 pay agreement said:
“The Company has begun to conduct an analysis of current Community coding against the mapping exercise carried out from the previous Community codes. Any employee can access their personal details via Café VIK or HRDirect. The Company will write to each employee, informing them of their new code. Any non-standard mappings will be identified and reasons for the decision given. An appeal process will be established to allow for the correction of inappropriate coding. Where the appeal process identifies incorrect mappings, the employee will be moved to the correct role and detail code. Where this has resulted in a lower pay rise for the individual in the 2004 pay review, this will be addressed. Any such increases will be backdated to 1 April 2004.”
In March the company said they had already begun, yet this part of the pay agreement has yet to be implemented. We call upon the company to complete implementation as a matter of urgency.
We note the announcement on 4th November of a “Review of Professional Community Roles” for Core Services employees in CSE and TSS roles. We instruct our reps to raise a collective grievance over this, and to seek to reach agreement with the company over the conduct of the exercise.
Motion 3: Representatives
We note that the company has recently taken to interfering in the ability of reps to communicate with employees by:
a) Threatening reps with disciplinary action
b) Censoring the “MAN05 Union” CafeVIK community
c) Threatening to stop talking to Amicus on any issue
We believe that employees are best served when the company consults and negotiates with the workforce through the reps, rather than trying to turn the union into some “outside body” which the company talks to instead of the employees.
We believe that the company is best served when reps are able to express the views of employees, and are accountable to us, rather than expressing personal opinions.
We reiterate the decision of our August EGM:
We call upon the company to constructively address the issues that our reps raise on our behalf. We would regard any attempt to victimise any of our representatives as an attack on all employees and our union.
We call upon the company to end the unacceptable policy of “shoot the messenger”. This is doubly unacceptable when in each instance the reps had given HR the opportunity to comment before making information public.
We instruct our reps to inform members immediately if any rep is disciplined for carrying out their duties on our behalf.
Nominations for NEC vacancy
Members endorsed nominations by five reps for a candidate for a vacant seat on the Amicus National Executive Council (NEC). We aren't printing the details of the nominee here because of the election rules.
[Please note that since this notice went out the situation appears to have changed. If this affects you, contact your rep for more information.]
At the same time as trying to gag employee representatives, the company has issued an announcement to Core Services employees currently in CSE and TSS roles.
We believe that this announcement is extremely misleading. The sting is in the statement at the end:
"However, it is envisaged that for the majority of employees there will be no change in Professional Community or benchmark level."
This should leave you in no doubt that it is envisaged that for a minority of employees there will be a change in Professional Community or benchmark level. In a context when the company denies employees access to information about the pay and benefits associated with Professional Communities and benchmark levels, we do not believe that such a process can be fair. Employees will be unable to determine whether they have been promoted, demoted, or unaffected. The company's decision not to carry out this regrading process in an open and transparent way can only lead employees to conclude that the company wishes to hide changes that are detrimental to employees.
Amicus will (as always) engage with the company to seek a fair way forward, but wish to make absolutely clear that we cannot support a regrading process carried out in such a non-transparent way. The company has still not cleared up the problems (highlighted by the UKCF and Amicus) created by previous non-transparent “remapping” exercises – another one will make it even harder for employees to work out where they stand.
The regrading exercise will consist of two parts. Firstly, some employees are being invited to attend focus groups to discuss the “role profile” documents that describe each group of similar jobs. Secondly, people or their jobs will be compared to these new role profiles, which is likely to result in changes to the Professional Community role or benchmark level for some. These levels form the foundation of the company’s pay and benefits system.
We strongly advise any employees (whether members or not) to seek advice from a rep if they are asked to take part in the first (validation) stage. You need to understand the potential consequences of what you are being asked to do. In the meantime, Amicus will take up the issue of allocation with management.
We believe that the company intends to carry out similar regrading exercises for other groups of employees in the future.
We will communicate further on these issues in the near future.
We are disappointed to have to report that on Thursday 4th November the company threatened a number of employee representatives with disciplinary action for performing their roles. The company said that if the reps reported anything at all about an issue, they would be subject to potential disciplinary action. The issue is of fundamental interest to employees - relating to pay and benefits.
The employee representatives concerned came from the Amicus and PCS unions, along with reps on the UK Consultative Forum (UKCF) and the old Fujitsu Consulting Consultative Forum (FCCF). The company made the threats based on the assertion that any communication whatsoever would be a breach of a "confidentiality agreement" - which simply does not exist. Ironically, the threat came after the reps had been good enough to send a draft communication to HR and asked them to agree the release of one item which had been genuinely confidential.
Employee representatives can only perform their role if they are able to communicate freely with the employees they represent about the issues affecting them. Amicus will not be gagged or prevented from providing employees with the information and representation they need.
Union reps have legal protection for performing their duties, and disciplinary action taken on these grounds would be unlawful. It is also likely that threatening, bullying and harassing employees because of their role as reps is unlawful.
At our “fortnightly meeting” with management on Friday, Amicus made clear our strength of feeling, and that we would be discussing next steps with our union full time officials. We are also discussing the issues with our colleagues from PCS and the Consultative Forums. Workplace reps are central to union organisation, and Amicus will not tolerate unjustifiable attacks upon them.
The reps from PCS, UKCF and FCCF are also unhappy with the company’s behaviour. The legal protection for reps on the UKCF and FCCF is slightly less clear-cut than for union reps. For this reason Amicus is taking the lead in issuing this report.
The situation reinforces the need to elect reps to the UKCF who have the backing, support and protection a union provides. Please remember to use your vote - see http://www.ourunion.org.uk/ukcf.htm for details of the union-backed candidates.
It's considered good business to "Inform and Consult" employees - after all, employees collectively know far more about the business than the best Chief Executive ever could. To encourage this, it will soon be a legal right of employees to be informed and consulted over a wider range of issues. As the company announcement makes clear, it was these new rights that led to the creation of the company's UK Consultative Forum (UKCF).
Unfortunately, a legal right isn't enough - employees and employers have to make the process work. Recent events leave one wondering about Fujitsu's commitment to effective employee representation.
The news that the company intend, in principle, to recognise Amicus at the new Central Park site in Manchester is welcome, but the other recent events are very worrying.
Effective employee representation depends on the reps being in close contact with those they represent - that's why unions have strong traditions of democracy and accountability. While the company is usually happy to discuss matters with a few reps, they seem desperate to keep employees in the dark. Just look at a few recent examples:
Employees want a constructive relationship between the union and the company. But they don't want reps to be complicit in keeping them in the dark to foster a cosy relationship with management. The members are the union.
Let’s hope the company takes a more constructive approach when we start the negotiations. They must realise that breaking current agreements doesn’t create the best atmosphere for negotiating new ones. They can’t seriously expect Amicus to keep the workforce in the dark.
What can you do?
At the EGM on 26th August, members discussed the still-unresolved dispute from last year around employee rights, redundancy and redeployment, and union recognition. Members agreed a resolution about the dispute, expressing concern at the unwillingness of the company to discuss a settlement.
Reps immediately sent the text of the resolution to HR, but the company did not carry out any of the confidence building measures the members had asked for:
1) Email to all MAN05 staff an agreed joint statement that both parties see the need for a negotiated settlement, and that if this hasn't been agreed by the time staff begin to transfer to the new Central Park site, both parties accept that the existing bargaining unit and arrangements will extend to cover the new site.
2) The company to indicate during September what issues they have with the current draft agreements, including any feedback from their legal advisors. Our reps are instructed to do the same.
3) The company to propose a date in the first week of October when we will either recommence talks or explain why they are unwilling to negotiate.
Indeed, in the intervening period, the company has taken a number of extremely provocative and aggressive steps.
There are, however, two pieces of good news:
1) The company has indicated that it does intend, in principle, to recognise Amicus at the new Central Park site.
2) We at last have some dates for negotiations, starting on Friday 12th November.
The company have not provided us with their comments on the drafts by the end of September, as members requested. They have recently stated that they will provide us with comments at the first negotiation meeting.
The last EGM had instructed reps to hold a further EGM in October to report back on progress. In the light of the delays, this Extraordinary General Meeting will actually be held:
3pm-4:30pm, Thursday 18th November
MAN05 restaurant
This meeting will be for all Amicus members based at MAN05 (including HOM99 with a MAN05 admin base). The EGM will hear a report back from the first negotiations, and instruct the reps on the way forward. Please make every effort to attend – book it in your diary now.
Members are entitled to attend in work time. If your manager might need to arrange cover for you to attend, please contact them NOW and get confirmation of your release. If you have any problems getting release, contact your rep immediately. If you leave it until the last minute, we may be unable to help.