UNITE has been running a national recruitment competition in Fujitsu, and the draw has now been made.
Congratulations to the following winners:
Please keep up the good work. Nobody is in a better position to ask your workmates to join than you are, and the more people join the more effective the union can be in making Fujitsu a better place to work.
The membership form is available for you to print off.
Quite a number of employees have complained to Health & Safety Reps about the icy conditions in the car park recently. This has been taken up with site facilities.
UNITE’s priority is to ensure that staff can safely get to and from work, not a focus on whether or not the gritting contractor has complied with their contract. Regardless of whether they had or not, the result was clearly unacceptable.
If you experience any slips in the car park, please make sure you report them to site facilities and copy your Health & Safety rep, whether or not any damage or injury results. If appropriate, you may wish to submit a more formal hazard, incident or accident report to the safety email box. Reporting issues will be helpful in encouraging site facilities to put measures in place to protect your safety
The company has wanted for a long time to “harmonise” employees’ terms and conditions covering overtime, shifts, standby and the normal working week. However, the level of company effort going into the informal discussions with a working group of employee reps from UNITE, PCS and the UKCF has fluctuated considerably.
UNITE was informed recently that the company is considering terminating these discussions in order to move much more quickly to implementation.
Employee reps are concerned that major issues remain unresolved and have asked for a serious discussion about the way forward, which we hope will take place shortly.
In the meantime, please be alert to any proposed changes to your own terms and conditions or working practices. If you work under any new arrangement you may be deemed to have accepted it. If in doubt – please talk to one of your UNITE reps.
In particular, please ensure you don’t end up on the truly dreadful “IS Interim Guidelines”. The company has agreed that they won’t be applied in the Manchester bargaining unit, but reps have still found the odd case cropping up so you need to be alert to make sure the company doesn’t take advantage of you.
UNITE members in Manchester decided on their pay claim at the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) on 17th October and it was submitted to the company the same day.
Since then a leaflet has been distributed across the Manchester site which includes the text of the claim, and pay campaign lanyards have begun to be distributed across the country. If you haven’t got yours yet, please speak to your rep. You could take a few to hand out to members and non-members near you as well.
In addition, UNITE has written to the company requesting information for collective bargaining and proposing dates for talks. Your reps are awaiting a response from the company to this, which is promised before Xmas.
Meanwhile, the company has met with the Pay and Benefits subgroup of the UK Consultative Forum (UKCF). A number of the employee reps on the UKCF subgroup are also UNITE reps. The employee reps proposed improvements to the draft “standard” company guidelines for the 2009 pay review, and a response on these proposals is expected shortly.
The company has already decided that it does intend to put in place (nationally) a couple of the measures proposed in our claim:
Of course the point about the Manchester Congestion Charge is now less relevant following the overwhelming vote to reject the scheme.
The future of Fujitsu’s NHS contract still remains unclear. There are no staff in the Manchester bargaining unit still at risk of redundancy, but there are some who might TUPE to a future supplier (probably BT). Concerns about TUPE have obviously increased with BT’s announcement of redundancies.
Outside Manchester there remain staff at risk of redundancy. Following lobbying by UNITE, Connecting For Health (CFH) had agreed to fund the jobs up to the end of January to allow time for negotiations between CFH, BT and Fujitsu to progress. It is now clear that agreement on a TUPE is unlikely by this time, so staff were concerned that redundancies might be imminent again. UNITE National Officer Peter Skyte has once again written to Ben Bradshaw, the health minister, seeking an extension of the funding.
For a number of years employees have complained that while the company had clear plans for which jobs it wants to have in Russia, South Africa or India, it had no clear plans for jobs at key UK locations.
UNITE is delighted to report that the Shared Services part of Infrastructure Services (IS) has put together a plan for which types of work it wants to focus on at its key UK locations, including Manchester. Your reps believe this will help:
Uncertainty following Courtley’s Departure
Inevitably there have been lots of rumours and speculation following the sudden departure of our Chief Executive.
Richard Christou has made clear that he will take some time to discuss and decide on future strategy. In the meantime, this article by industry analysts Ovum gives an indication of his thinking:
http://www.ovum.com/news/euronews.asp?id=7564
New NHS Job Opportunities in Manchester - but beware!
UNITE reps have met with the Company to discuss the transfer of a small number of NHS support roles to Manchester. RARs have been created to enable employees to apply for these new roles within IS Shared Services, and employees on the HMRC/Aspire contract have already been briefed about these opportunities. Although the Company confirmed that none of the jobs on the Aspire contract are currently at risk, they believe the contract will become more Telford based and that the Aspire presence in Manchester will diminish.
If or when the company puts the Aspire jobs at risk, employees would benefit from the protection of the Annex 1 agreement in the redeployment process.
Your reps of course welcome and encourage new work coming to Manchester, however anyone tempted by these opportunities should think carefully about applying for them. The possible catch is that if the NHS work transfers out of Fujitsu, which could happen within the next few months, people taking on the roles could find themselves in scope for TUPE transfer to a new supplier, and arguably to a more uncertain future. The Company offered your reps no guarantees that employees moving into these roles would be protected from a potential TUPE out.
Thanks to all members who attended today’s Fujitsu Manchester Extraordinary General Meeting.
This is a summary of the outcomes.
1) Nominations for UNITE Joint General Secretary
Members endorsed the following nominations for the forthcoming election:
| Workplace rep: | Nominating: |
| Andy C Smith | Laurence Faircloth |
| Ben Ashdown | Laurence Faircloth |
| Dave Francis | Laurence Faircloth |
| Ian Allinson | Laurence Faircloth |
| Isabel Hay | Laurence Faircloth |
| Jackie Cook | Laurence Faircloth |
| Lynne Hodge | Laurence Faircloth |
| Michael Thomas | Laurence Faircloth |
| Pauline Bradburn | Laurence Faircloth |
| Phil Tepper | Laurence Faircloth |
2) Dealing with Job Losses
Members agreed this motion:
|
Dealing With Job Losses Since the introduction of the “Annex 1” agreement in 2007, UNITE and Fujitsu have successfully worked together to redeploy many staff whose jobs the company no longer required. No UNITE members in the Manchester bargaining unit have been made redundant against their wishes. We are now entering a recession, so any redundancies have consequences beyond those directly affected, as well as much more serious consequences for the individual. Within any organisation, redundancies undermine morale and productivity, especially if a workforce feels it is being made to pay for problems not of their making. Some employers are taking advantage of the recession to try to reduce pay and conditions, or to put pressure on remaining employees to take on even more work. Such selfish actions by individual employers are to the detriment of the whole of society, as it is generally accepted that a reduction in spending power of working people will make the recession worse. Also, the economy can ill afford to lose valuable skills for the sake of short-term profitability. We recognise that the current economic climate changes the context for discussions about redundancy and redeployment. This requires us to review our approach to any such situations in future. We recognise that employees in many other organisations are grappling with the same issues, and that successes in opposing redundancies elsewhere will make it easier for us to succeed in Fujitsu. Within Fujitsu, redeployment is part of normal business, and we want to work with the company to build on the success of redeployment using Annex 1. We instruct our reps to keep us informed about the numbers of people who are in Redeployment Warning Periods and what the outcomes are. We oppose employees being made redundant. If any member in the Manchester bargaining unit is put at risk of redundancy, we instruct our reps to consult us immediately on what steps we should take to protect members’ employment. We note that the company has struggled or been reluctant to implement some aspects of Annex 1. These include measures that could help avoid redundancy altogether, such as stopping overtime and external recruitment. It would be wrong for the company to have some people working long hours (often unpaid) while making others redundant. The company structure and facilities make it difficult for managers to seek and offer employees suitable alternative jobs. Similarly, the company has not been effective at seeking volunteers where it believed redundancies were likely. We resolve to |
3) Any Other Business
There was an update on the case of Karen Reissmann, the local nurse and UNISON activist sacked for speaking out in defence of the NHS.
Karen rejected a financial offer to settle her tribunal case because she felt it did not address any of the key issues – defending free speech, defending union organisation, reinstatement or clearing her name. Her union, UNISON, then decided to withdraw legal support from her case.
A legal defence fund has been launched to raise £10,000 to fund the case. A collection at the meeting raised £75.
Members were asked to wear and pass round the pay campaign lanyards.
Members were reminded about the recruitment competition - £300 in prizes will be drawn before Xmas for new members and recruiters across Fujitsu in the UK. The membership form is available on CafeVIK or on our ourunion website if you want to ask someone to join.
Don’t forget the EGM:
Extraordinary General Meeting
1:30-2:30pm, Thursday 4th December
MAN34, conference rooms GCR1 & GCR2
This meeting is for all UNITE members in the Fujitsu Manchester bargaining unit.
All members are entitled to attend in work time, but if your manager might need to arrange cover, you should ask them to confirm your release now. If you experience any difficulties with release, please contact your rep in good time. Leaving it to the last minute will make it impossible for your reps to help you.
This is a shorter meeting than usual, with just two items on the agenda:
1) Nominations for UNITE Joint General Secretary
2) Dealing with job losses
There is just one item of “Any Other Business”, which is an update on the case of Karen Reissmann, the UNISON union activist and local mental health nurse, who is campaigning for reinstatement after her sacking for speaking out in defence of the NHS.
1) Nominations for UNITE Joint General Secretary
Details of proposed nominations were circulated in the Outlook invitation sent out on Friday. In addition, Jackie Cook and Pauline Bradburn are seeking members’ endorsement to nominate Laurence Faircloth.
2) Dealing with Job Losses
The motion from the reps committee on dealing with job losses was circulated in the Outlook invitation on Friday.