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 get better access to information and more ability to influence decisions that affect you.
• 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 body for informing and consulting employees at UK level. It is based on a Charter which was negotiated by elected reps, including many union members who made an important contribution to the process. The Fujitsu Voice Charter is legally enforceable, which will help ensure that the company sticks to it. It also enables reps to communicate freely and directly with their constituents.
Fujitsu Voice reps now also represent employees not covered by a union recognition agreement for collective redundancy consultations through the managing collective redundancies framework agreement that union members were also very influential in securing.

For more information, see the Fujitsu Voice 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.

Following a number of Elected Representatives stepping down from Fujitsu Voice, the company is now running a by-election to fill all of the current vacancies within the ER group.

Some of the vacant seats have had only one nomination, and two UNITE members have been elected unopposed in the SSD & Commercial, Finance, HR, Legal, Procurement, Quality, Marketing, General Management and Executive constituencies. The Deputy ER vacancy for Business Services was also filled unopposed.

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 is encouraging employees to vote for the following candidates first:

The PCS union is also encouraging employees to vote for the same candidates, but in a slightly different order.

Please put the union-backed candidate(s) top of your list, then vote for as many or few of the other candidates as you want. Voting for other candidates after your top preferences is a good idea. It does not reduce the chances of success for your top choices.

On Fujitsu Voice, reps work together regardless of whether they happened to be union members.

Staff 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”. Electing union members to Fujitsu Voice helps ensure constructive working relationships. It also helps ensure the concerns of the majority of staff are at the centre of discussions, countering the tendency for Voice to be dominated by reps from a narrow layer of senior roles.

Union members elected to Voice have access to extra training, support and advice to help them do a good job for all employees. The unions provide a network for reps to talk to their counterparts in other IT companies so that we can adopt best practice.

If the company ignores employees' concerns, reps who are not union members have fewer 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?).

How do the elections work?

Voting opened on Monday 18th November, and has been extended to run until 11pm on Monday 9th December. 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/single-transferable-vote 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.

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. Overall approach to 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. We need a strong team of reps to ensure this opportunity isn't wasted.

History

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. Unlike the Fujitsu Voice Charter, the UKCF agreement wasn’t legally enforceable. In 2009 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 a major redundancy programme (“Project Cherry”).

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 gave notice to terminate the existing UKCF agreement, calling for a new body to be set up on a firmer legal footing.

A new "Negotiating Group" was elected, which delivered a Fujitsu Voice Charter which met much of what the UKCF reps hoped for when they resigned. Fujitsu Voice got up and running in late 2010, with reps elected for a three-year term of office. While Voice has had a few bumpy patches along the way, it has proved useful and is contributing to the welcome shift towards a more open company culture.

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 doesn'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

Fujitsu Voice can’t deal with issues outside the UK, so UNITE and PCS are also supporting moves to set up a strong European Works Council (EWC). Fujitsu Voice has an important role in providing the main UK channel into an EWC.

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 also 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.