Essex County Council

Most UNISON members in Essex County Council are subject to the National Agreement on Pay and Conditions of Service, the 'Green book.' You are entitled to ask management to see this though we suspect that very few ECC establishments have copies easily available.

Other conditions, including those like car allowances, where the County has departed from the Green book, are detailed on the Intranet under "Working Here".

CAPABILITY AND DISCIPLINARY POLICY

Unison has been in negotiations with ECC to try to cut down on cases going to a full disciplinary hearing. The new policy will enable managers to intervene and take responsibility instead of suspending members. This year we have been involved in over 160 disciplinaries - resulting in a lot of work for Unison Branch Officers and HR, and these are just the ones we counted!

Sept 09

PERFORMANCE RELATED PAY

At a meeting on Pay and Perfomance on 24th September, the issue of moving staff onto "Pay and Performance" conditions remained unsolved as UNISON's position was, and still remains, that continuing with this policy is unfair in the light of the new developments announced by Lord Hanningfield stating that Essex would become a commissioning authority and would not deliver services. This will obviously have massive implications for all Essex staff on Grades 5 and 6. It would mean that these staff, if moved onto "Pay and Performance" conditions, would be vulnerable as the future is unspecified and uncertain ie. at this point in time we have no idea of where their posts will be moved to, and who their employer might be. Our position is that, until future developments have been fully clarified, staff should remain on their existing terms and conditions. However, UNISON is happy to continue to discuss this with management and hopes for a satisfactory resolution.

Mick Mahoney Branch Secretary

Oct 09

At a recent meeting, the UNISON Branch Secretary, Mick Mahoney, made it clear that with the pending "transformation" proposals, it would be unfair for UNISON to agree a path where we could be sending staff to the private sector on a scheme which, we feel, would put staff at a disadvantage.

We have asked the employer on numerous occasions how much money would be put aside in the budget for this.

One good piece of news is that those staff who were transferred to Essex Cares will not compulsorily be moved over but can opt in if they wish.

Babs Whitfield, Assistant Branch Secretary

Sept 09

ECC’s long running campaign to put all Band 5 and 6 staff on to performance Related Pay (PRP) has reached a new stage.

You will recall that the Council has steadfastly refused over a period of years to negotiate over the scheme.

The Council has recently written to all those affected giving them a final opportunity to opt into the scheme. Anyone not opting in by 30th September will be forced into the scheme by April next year.

The PRP scheme takes away:- Annual increments for this group of staff; Cost of living awards which in future will only be available to those staff meeting the performance targets laid in the ‘my performance’ documents. So if you are in Bands 5 and 6 make the most of next year’s cost of living award (if there is one) as it will be the last you will receive.

The Council envisages that 5%, around 75 people out of this group of staff, will receive no increase at all in the national year used in the example.

For the vast majority (90%) of the staff in this group any increase will be a maximum of 6%

To get 6% individuals will have to deliver over and above ‘clear and stretching objectives and often go beyond their remit to deliver superior performance’.

A very smalll number (around 5%) may get more than 6% if they ’exceed expectations in all aspects of their role against clear and stretching objectives’.

And there is no guarantee that the Council will continue to use these norms in future years. Evidence from the PRP scheme already in operation for more senior managers suggests that as the financial squeeze has tightened that ‘pool’ available has shrunk.

UNISON still feels that the scheme is unfair, unworkable and divisive.

Readers may recall that when the Council first invited staff to opt in they achieved a derisory level of voluntary acceptance, 10%

The Council has since forced all new starters from outside into these grades into the scheme and anyone who has been promoted into theses grades. Even then it has only managed to get around 40% support for it.

IBM -The partner of choice?!

As members in Essex County Council will know by now, IBM is the Council’s preferred ‘transformation partner’. We are assured that no contracts have been signed but IBM are already working on a number of projects on which they have to deliver at least a statement of intent before the Council meeting on October 13 at which the whole thing will be debated. If the Council meeting goes according to plan (and with a Conservative majority in the dozens, this seems highly likely,) the contracts will be signed sometime thereafter. Let’s hope that the due diligence and other contract processes will be better than they were with the BT contract!

The Council’s intentions were further clarified by a leak in August of part of a paper about the HR strategy for the next few years. This follows Lord Hanningfield’s words to the unions a few years ago that in ten years’ time he expected there to be only 2,000 people working for the Council instead of over 10,000 (schools are excluded from both calculations.) The latest paper says, amongst other things, that ‘The organisation’s core competency will have shifted form care delivery and service delivery to policy partnerships and procurement …’ This could well mean that the 800 staff who have just become part of the arms length ‘Essex Cares’ company will not be the last to find themselves employed by someone for whom they did not choose to work.

Apart from anything else IBM is already running the back office functions in Somerset County Council, Avon and Somerset Police and Taunton Deane District Council in that county. IBM staff involved in Essex are surely calling on experience from their colleagues in South West One (as it is known.) An extension of this to take over running the functions would not seem unexpected. Anyone fancy moving to Taunton?

The so-called ‘Gold’ projects on which IBM is already working (with teams of people from ECC) have been selected although it is difficult to understand, from the descriptions given, what exactly they are intended to do.

To save us reproducing them here you can look at the entries on the Intranet on Finance and Procurement transformation and on the ‘customer excellence channel strategy’ which includes gems such as knowing who our customers are and their expectations. (If you can’t access the intranet contact Branch Office and we can send you the relevant paperwork).

One would have hoped that an organisation which has been in existence for as long as ECC probably should know the stuff that is there already. None of them would win a ‘Crystal Mark’ for plain English.

The projects already under way are being run in line with the ‘lean’ philosophy which IBM has used in many places before. The Civil Service has been a particular beneficiary/ victim of this and if you talk to staff in DWP and other central government departments you may learn something of the effects – it is not popular with the rank and file!

UNISON is still opposed to the whole project and will continue to do what it can to stop it but with the previously mentioned political majority we have to plan for the worst case scenarios. UNISON branch officers, together with the union’s Regional Head of Local Government have continued to meet both senior ECC officers and IBM. We have discussed visiting other IBM work sites to gain some insight into their working practices. We shall also be contacting Somerset UNISON branches for their experience.

Members who have contact with IBM are invited to get in touch with the branch office to let us know anything they find out but also so that if any statements are made about future working practices or employment we can raise these at the highest level.

Sept 09