Fujitsu is rushing ahead with the ill-conceived redundancies in Business Operations and Business & Application Services (BAS). Worries continue that other areas will follow.
Business Operations pressed ahead with selecting people for redundancy without having sought volunteers first, or considering measures which could avoid compulsory redundancies.
The company is resisting calls from the unions, redundancy forums, and even Fujitsu Voice, to give everyone at least 90 days consultation. This means that those employees not in the Manchester bargaining unit or covered by the union-negotiated Security of Employment Agreement (SEA) may be given notice after just 30 days.
For the benefit of those at risk now, and for those who could be affected by redundancies in other areas in the near future, we need to up the pressure on Fujitsu to handle the situation responsibly.
UNITE has produced a petition about Fujitsu redundancies. Please sign the redundancy petition, ask your colleagues to sign it, and return it as quickly as possible.
The national "jobs, pay and pensions" dispute was resolved in February 2010 with the "ACAS agreement" which included the clause:
l) the company confirms that the terms of its Defined Contribution pension schemes are a contractual entitlement for those existing and new employees who are members of such schemes;
The company resisted implementing this commitment - it was only following industrial action last year in Crewe and Manchester that the company reached a new agreement on 20th January 2012 which finally led to a new statement on contractual status of Fujitsu's DC pension schemes being published on CafeVIK. After initially refusing, the company has now conceded (after seeking legal advice) that this means that where the company makes employees redundant, dismisses them without notice and pays Pay In Lieu Of Notice (PILON) and Pay In Lieu Of Benefits (PILOB), the PILOB must now include lost company pension contributions – normally between 6% and 20% of salary for FJUK members. Well done to all the members across the country who helped secure this important improvement to redundancy terms by taking part in UNITE's campaigns over the last three years.
Please speak to your colleagues and encourage them to Join the union now.
Volunteering
The company is obstructing efforts to replace Compulsory Redundancies (CRs) with Voluntary Redundancies (VRs) by initially opposing any VR scheme, then introducing VR late and subject to unjustified restrictions.
Past experience shows that if the union can identify "pairs" of employees where a volunteer could do the job of someone selected for CR, it is very hard for the company to refuse the pairing, as this could lead to an avoidable compulsory redundancy and a potential Unfair Dismissal claim.
If you would like to volunteer for redundancy and someone in one of the following roles where people are currently at risk could do your job, please get in touch now so that any potential pairings (which often depend on skills, geography etc as well as roles) can be explored. This does not commit you to volunteering, and no names will be passed to the company without your consent. To get an idea of what your redundancy package would be, you can look at the UNITE online redundancy calculator (note that this has not been updated to include pensions in PILOB yet).
Roles with people currently at risk:
Similarly, if you know of any opportunities for redeployment for people doing these roles, please get in touch.
Selected?
If you've been selected for redundancy, please reply to this email to let UNITE know, and say whether or not you want to stay in the company.
Some tips:
Thanks to everyone who completed UNITE’s survey as part of the campaign for fair and transparent pay and benefits in the IT Services industry. The survey (along with equivalents for other major companies in the sector) is now closed and we hope the main results will be announced soon.
One thing that jumped out from the results was that many Fujitsu employees don't know their own pay "comparators" - the basis of pay reviews. For years Fujitsu kept these secret, but persistent campaigning and legal action is gradually opening them up. You can access yours by:
The screen should show the median salary, which is the median for Fujitsu Services employees in the UK in your role code. Note that the figures have not been updated for a couple of years, but they are still in use.
For employees in Service Desks managed on the D1-D4 or Rise+ pay systems, the medians are not used and the correct comparators are not yet displayed. The company has promised UNITE that information about D1-D4 and Rise+ will begin to be added to Self Service shortly - one of the gains of the recent dispute in Manchester.
To use the comparators in discussions about your pay with your manager, you also need to know how they are supposed to be applied. The key documents for 2011 pay reviews are here.
As discussion begins about the 2012 pay review, it appears that company resistance to some of the points UNITE has been putting forward may be softening. At the recent Fujitsu Voice meeting, Duncan Tait asked for views about how pay should be distributed and even acknowledged that many employees would like some "Cost Of Living" element to pay reviews.
Fujitsu Voice reps are asking for input from constituents on this. When giving your input to them, please consider the points from the "Fair Pay Charter" that UNITE reps in our industry developed last year:
To ensure a consistent approach to pay and benefits which is fair, transparent and not discriminatory, Unite is asking companies in the IT Services sector to sign up to our Fair Pay Charter and incorporate the following principles into their pay systems:
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Mental health problems, Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs: usually back, neck, shoulder and upper limb problems) and Cardiovascular problems account for almost 40% of Fujitsu sickness absence.
There are three basic steps which all employers should take and which help to protect workers from suffering these problems as a result of work:
Fujitsu doesn’t generally carry out risk assessments for stress. DSE assessments in Fujitsu are patchy, and are often “self-assessments” by untrained staff – which do little to protect health but gather evidence to help the company blame employees if they later become ill. Breaches of the Working Time Regulations are routine.
In recent years Fujitsu has introduced more and more intrusive procedures for people to report sickness and on return to work. A key justification for these is that they allow an employer to gather information to address the causes of sickness absence. Many staff feel they are used to bully people into coming into work when unfit – often spreading illness around the office.
UNITE reps have recently learned that the statistics for sickness absence are not even made available by HR to the person responsible for safety. This confirms the impression given by the company’s “health and safety objectives” – which are all about creating a paper trail for auditors – none relate to health or safety outcomes for employees.
Part of the problem is a lack of involvement by employees in their own Health and Safety (H&S). Employers are required by law to consult employees about a range of matters relating to their health and safety, yet outside areas with union recognition the company has no process in place to do so. The minutes of the company’s H&S steering board show that no consultation has taken place at all.
At the suggestion of a trained UNITE H&S rep, Fujitsu Voice has proposed that the company should organise elections for Representatives of Employee Safety (RoES) in areas where we don’t yet have union recognition. RoES have similar powers to union H&S reps – including being entitled to paid release from work for training and to carry out their duties.
If you would like to help improve the health and safety of Fujitsu staff, please stand as a UNITE H&S Rep now, wherever you work in the UK. In areas where the union isn’t yet recognised, this would enable the new reps to start getting involved in advance of the elections we hope to see for RoES – giving them a good chance of being elected and being effective reps.
If you’re interested in standing as a UNITE H&S Rep, please get in touch now.
Fujitsu Voice is an important tool for employees to be informed and consulted. Its Charter gives it a much firmer legal footing than Voice’s predecessor, the UKCF – meaning there can be real consequences if the company fails to stick to the rules.
Employers often undermine information and consultation bodies by trying to:
The arrangement of constituencies on Fujitsu Voice has created a situation where the majority of the Elected Reps are managers or other senior staff, which inevitably makes it harder for the body to reflect the opinions of the majority of employees.
An "information and consultation" body can never be a substitute for genuine independent union organisation, but it can be a useful complement to it, particularly if the two work together. To make a body like Fujitsu Voice fully effective will take a culture change - which takes both time and effort.
A number of vacancies have arisen on Fujitsu Voice, and the company will shortly be inviting nominations. As in the past, UNITE and PCS would like to identify potential candidates as quickly as possible so that a list can be agreed which all employees are asked to support and so that the unions can assist members with their nominations and election campaigns.
The vacancies for reps or deputies are currently in the following Professional Community constituencies:
If you are interested in standing, please get in touch soon as possible.
For more information, see the Fujitsu Voice web site and the briefing pack UNITE created for the original Fujitsu Voice elections.
149 UNITE members employed by Austrian multi-national packaging company, Mayr-Melnhof Packaging (MMP) in Bootle, Merseyside have been locked out by the company since 18 February.
Members took lawful industrial action to support a previous agreement reached with MMP and to stop the selection by the company of those to be made redundant. MMP locked the gates of the Bootle site. UNITE members have been picketing the site since and are campaigning to get the company to end the lockout and enter proper negotiations.
For more information, see the UNITE newsflash. This also gives information about where you can send messages of protest, messages of support, or financial contributions for the locked-out workers. Your UNITE Fujitsu Combine Committee has already sent a small contribution from our fund, and would encourage individuals to contribute too.
Please see below for an update about redundancies. UNITE's priority is to avoid people being forced out of the company through compulsory redundancy.
UNITE, Fujitsu Manchester
| REDUNDANCIES |
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Fujitsu is rushing ahead with the ill-conceived redundancies in Business Operations and Business & Application Services (BAS). Worries continue that other areas will follow. Business Operations pressed ahead with selecting people for redundancy without having sought volunteers first, or considering measures which could avoid compulsory redundancies. The company is resisting calls from the unions, redundancy forums, and even Fujitsu Voice, to give everyone at least 90 days consultation. This means that those employees not in the Manchester bargaining unit may be given notice after just 30 days. For the benefit of those at risk now, and for those who could be affected by redundancies in other areas in the near future, we need to up the pressure on Fujitsu to handle the situation responsibly. UNITE has produced a petition about Fujitsu redundancies. Please sign the redundancy petition, ask your colleagues to sign it, and return it as quickly as possible. Progress on Pensions & PILOB The national “jobs, pay and pensions” dispute was resolved in February 2010 with the “ACAS agreement” which included the clause: l) the company confirms that the terms of its Defined Contribution pension schemes are a contractual entitlement for those existing and new employees who are members of such schemes; The company resisted implementing this commitment – it was only following industrial action last year in Crewe and Manchester that the company reached a new agreement on 20th January 2012 which finally led to a new statement on contractual status of Fujitsu’s DC pension schemes being published on CafeVIK. After initially refusing, the company has now conceded (after seeking legal advice) that this means that where the company makes employees redundant, dismisses them without notice and pays Pay In Lieu Of Notice (PILON) and Pay In Lieu Of Benefits (PILOB), the PILOB must now include lost company pension contributions – normally between 6% and 20% of salary for FJUK members. Well done to everyone who helped secure this important improvement to redundancy terms by taking part in UNITE’s campaigns over the last three years. Please speak to your colleagues and encourage them to Join the union now. Volunteering The company is obstructing efforts to replace Compulsory Redundancies (CRs) with Voluntary Redundancies (VRs) by initially opposing any VR scheme, then introducing VR late and subject to unjustified restrictions. Past experience shows that if the union can identify “pairs” of employees where a volunteer could do the job of someone selected for CR, it is very hard for the company to refuse the pairing, as this could lead to an avoidable compulsory redundancy and a potential Unfair Dismissal claim. If you would like to volunteer for redundancy and someone in one of the following roles where people are currently at risk could do your job, please get in touch now so that any potential pairings (which often depend on skills, geography etc as well as roles) can be explored. This does not commit you to volunteering, and no names will be passed to the company without your consent. To get an idea of what your redundancy package would be, you can look at the UNITE online redundancy calculator (note that this has not been updated to include pensions in PILOB yet). Roles with people currently at risk:
Similarly, if you know of any opportunities for redeployment for people doing these roles, please get in touch |
While millions of people bemoan the inadequacy of the legal protection for UK workers, the government is busy looking at how the balance of power can be further tilted towards employers.
One of the areas the government is looking at is reducing the minimum consultation periods for redundancy from the current 0/30/90 day levels – which are already shorter than many other European countries. At the recent Fujitsu Voice meeting, one of Fujitsu’s HR Directors picked up on the government proposals in an attempt to justify Fujitsu’s attempt to rush through some of its current redundancies in less than 90 days.
What a contrast with Fujitsu’s approach to implementing the Agency Worker Regulations, which represented a small but important improvement in workers’ rights. In that case, HR showed no enthusiasm for early implementation!
We need to defend what legal rights we have, and push for Fujitsu to exceed them.
In May 2011 the trustees of the ICL DB Pension Plan announced changes to the “Early Retirement Factors” (ERFs) which apply to members drawing early pensions after leaving Fujitsu. The ERF is the amount per year by which your pension is reduced if you draw it early.
To avoid the increased ERFs (last announced as 5% per year, rather than 3%) many members can choose to draw an immediate pension the day they leave Fujitsu.
That’s a big enough decision if you’re just planning your retirement. It seems particularly unfair to lose out in this way if you are forced out through TUPE or redundancy. If you are potentially due to be made redundant or TUPE transfer out of the company it is important to clarify your position with the pensions department and get financial advice in good time so that you can make the necessary arrangements with the pensions department before you leave the company.
There’s also a new statement from the trustees about tax. While it normally would only interest very high earners, anyone being made redundant and looking to sacrifice some or all of their redundancy package into their pension fund should consider the implications.
UNITE is aware that 79 employees that work on the Tesco contract are in-scope for TUPE transfer out of Fujitsu: 63 from Engineering Services, 6 from Implementation & Test Services, and 10 from RTM&S BU.
As part of the consultation process the Company has asked for 4 employee representatives, 2 from Engineering Services, 1 from the Development team and 1 from the Account team in the Business Unit.
At the moment only two people have put their names forward for this, one UNITE member (Greg Mathews from Engineering Services) and one other, so more nominations are needed.
UNITE members who are elected as employee reps will have access to advice and support from the union. Unless you’re in the Manchester Bargaining Unit, please consider standing as an employee rep for the Consultation Group - the deadline for nominations is Wednesday 7th March at 12 noon so if you are willing to stand, apply soon (to HR).
If you are in scope for this transfer please get in touch.
If you know of non-members in scope for this transfer please do encourage them to join UNITE.
Members of the FJUK pension will have received a communication from the company about elections to the new consultation group. Contrary to what the company notice states, the poll is open now.
If you are a member of the FJUK Pension Plan, please use this link to vote now. UNITE is encouraging employees to support union members Alasdair Lewis, Christopher Woolley and Ed Wells
The March edition of the Unite National newsletter is here.