A Taxing ‘Poll’

We understand from sources inside the building that MyCSP management’s ‘poll’ on union recognition, is going ahead this week; with staff being told to expect to receive an email from the polling company ‘Civica’, asking them if they’re in favour of union recognition or if they’re opposed.

The message from the Chief Executive says that an “anonymous, one-question poll” will be sent to the work email address of staff this week (w/c 26 August). The Chief Executive goes on to say that management are having discussions with the company managing the ‘poll’ about how they can presume the votes of those people who are currently on strike, and that they will also be ‘contacting staff on long-term absence’.

Leaving aside the idea of a ‘poll’ being so independent that the scrutineer can be asked to ‘presume’ some votes will go a certain way; nobody is being given the option of (for example) meeting with the union and having the opportunity to properly discuss the benefits of recognition and collective bargaining, before they exercise their vote.

Then there is the matter of who actually gets to vote in the management-run ‘poll’. As we’ve said before, for our strike we had to provide precise numbers, grades and locations of any and all staff being balloted. As far as we can tell, all MyCSP are doing is providing the scrutineer with a list of people with Equiniti email addresses, and they’re getting a vote.

Finally, even in the increasingly unlikely event that a management-run, cold-called plebiscite, sent to a list of Equiniti staff provided by an anti-union management, actually produces a vote in favour of recognition; there’s still no guarantee that MyCSP will recognise PCS - given the Chief Executive’s email goes on to say that:

“Regardless of whether you are a member of the union, having a recognised union in MyCSP will impact every Employee Partner. We therefore want to ensure we can take your views into consideration when deciding how to proceed from here.”

So, all things considered, we think we can be forgiven for not taking MyCSP’s ‘poll’ very seriously.

Capita Update

The next meeting between PCS and Capita, to discuss taking forward the in-principle agreement to voluntary union recognition, is taking place on Wednesday 3 September.

We’ve already provided Capita with formal proposals about the wording of an agreement, and we’ve asked for their thoughts on our suggested terms ahead of next week’s meeting.

Denial: It’s not just a river in Egypt

PCS are pleased to have received an email from Jonathan Hinder, MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, who has written to the MyCSP Chief Executive, and has provided us with a copy of the response he has received.

Jonathan has expressed concern that the response “did not engage with the substance of the points [he] raised and leaves several key questions unresolved”. Jonathan has also said he would be happy to chat to PCS to discuss our concerns further.

In his response to Jonathan, Duncan Watson said:

• “Further, as you may not be aware, as part of the consultation process PCS has been sent all information which has been made available to employees and their representatives”

• “There has also been an offer to PCS to participate more formally in the TUPE consultation process in order to represent its members”; and our personal favourite

•  “There is no formal documentation whatsoever that supports the assertion that Union recognition moved to MyCSP on its creation in 2012.”

PCS have replied to the Pendle MP to thank him for his involvement; and we’ve provided him with more information regarding the response.

The key take-aways from the MyCSP response, that we all need to remember, are:

• On the first point, we’ve been sent a list of all the information that has been made available to their ‘Employee Council’, and being sent a list of all the information is a bit different to actually being sent all the information.

• On the second point, what Duncan omits is the fact that we’ve been locked out of the talks throughout, and although we’ve latterly been offered the opportunity to have a limited involvement now, the offer expressly excludes our being able to revisit the TUPE elements the company has already set, during the months we’ve been locked out of talks.

• The third point is the most amazing, given the fact that we have provided MyCSP with an actual copy of the original measures statement, showing that the recognition of the Civil Service unions carried over into MyCSP, and yet the company’s response is to effectively deny the document exists.

It’s a funny thing, denial. It can happen for a number of reasons; but here at Transferring Values, we like the definition given by the famous psychologist Sigmund Freud, who defined it as “an ‘ostrich policy’ for avoiding distressing aspects of reality”.

Anyway, we like good, solid facts and we’ll stick to those. What we’ll also do is take Jonathan up on his kind offer to chat about our campaign, and as usual, we’ll keep everyone informed.

We were ‘Superpickets’, they were just ‘Supercilious’

The PCS ‘Superpicket’, marking the first six weeks of the MyCSP strike, was a massive success. Not only was the turnout so big that we needed a really wide-angle shot to get everyone in; but the atmosphere was great throughout, something which carried on into the ‘after-picket party’ in the Lion.

But while the atmosphere was good outside the building, clearly inside the MyCSP offices, management were projecting some serious toxicity.

Firstly, management fixed up a ‘Teams’ meeting where they’ve told everyone they plan to talk about the industrial action, and promptly sent the invitation to all the strikers, suggesting that they had to attend too.

Then management started threatening strikers with disciplinary investigations for taking part in the strike.

PCS are in the process of writing to the home email address of all members in MyCSP, to respond to management’s latest clumsy attempt at intimidating its own workforce. (Spoiler Alert: If you’re on strike, they can’t make you go to the Teams meeting; and they can’t discipline you for taking part in what the law accepts is a ‘protected strike’).

In fact, when we told one of our Headquarters Officials about the Teams meeting and the threat of discipline, they told Transferring Values:

“I don’t know who’s advising their managers, but it’s entirely possible that they come to work in a Clown Car.”

Gallows 'Poll'

It looks like the same management that has spent the last few months trying to keep unions out of the office, is going to press ahead with its management-run ‘poll’, regarding whether or not there should be union recognition for the office.

Given MyCSP management’s distinct lack of impartiality on the subject; coupled with their obvious fondness for trying to intimidate any members of staff who don’t agree with them, there’s no chance that anyone is going to consider their ‘poll’ as anything other than an attempt to manufacture an anti-union position in the workplace.

Incidentally, management’s little foray into pretending to listen to people, has once again meant that MyCSP has found its way into the pages of Civil Service World. You can find the article here. Enjoy.  

Excuses, excuses...

As we approach the end of our sixth week of industrial action, MyCSP’s Chief Executive, Duncan Watson, has suggested that the company might run their own “simple and anonymous poll” to ask all staff whether they want a recognised union. He’s gone on to say that PCS should “respect” the outcome of this management-run survey.

If it was the usual kind of union recognition ballot, it would involve a properly run vote, with unions getting access to all staff, to give us the chance to explain the benefits of collective bargaining; and the ballot would be run with proper oversight and with a proper timetable.

In the email, PCS are being expected to “respect” some kind of company-run ‘cold-called plebiscite’, when that same company has spent all its time trying to keep unions out of the office.

Additionally, the excuse the Chief Executive gave for this latest wheeze, is that everyone in MyCSP should have a say in how it’s run; which is strange, because we thought it was a Limited Company, with a Board of Directors; not some kind of Anarcho-Syndicalist Collective. As well as that, they weren’t quite so keen for us all to get a vote before MyCSP changed the way overtime is calculated, and now we all have to work for longer before we get the overtime rate.

Still, we can add it to the list of all the other excuses, including:

• When staff moved from DWP to MyCSP, the original transfer terms confirmed union recognition; but MyCSP just said they didn’t accept it.

• At Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, MyCSP argued they were just avoiding imposing recognition on Capita; but they’ve not budged from that position, even after Capita agreed to recognise the union from Day 1.

• Later, MyCSP claimed there was ‘no collective bargaining left before their contract ended’, despite ongoing talks about the workforce transfer being a classic example of collective bargaining.

You can read the union’s response to MyCSP’s ‘company-ballot’ plan here.

Sometimes during a long strike, you can get people regularly drifting back to work, but in our case it’s the opposite. We’ve seen colleagues who were non-members at the start of the strike, but who are now choosing to join the union and join in with the action.

As part of our campaign, the union has launched an email campaign, encouraging members of the public to write to MyCSP’s Chief Executive Officer, calling on him to recognise the union and involve us in the transfer talks.

You can find details of the email campaign here. It only takes a couple of minutes; so make sure that you join in and help keep up the pressure on the company.

We’ve already published the two-page document that PCS drafted, that would end the dispute, and allow for real talks about collective issues generally, and TUPE in particular. We’ve reminded MyCSP of this, and if they want to talk, they know where to find us.  

'Super Picket' Planned!

We had a great members’ meeting today (Friday 8 August) with lots of good questions. Hopefully we answered them all; but if there is still something you need answering, you can always drop your question into the WhatsApp group.

One of things we talked about today was the fact that a great many of our members haven’t had the opportunity to meet-up in person, in the five weeks since the beginning of the strike. As a result of this, we’re organising a ‘Super Picket’ for the morning of Friday 15 August. So, particularly if you haven’t had the chance to come along to the Picket Line yet, please join us next Friday. The picket will start at 7:00am but later will be fine, if you can’t make it that early – just come along as soon as you can.

Then at 10:00am we’ll all be retiring to the Lion Tavern on the corner of Moorfields, where Dave the landlord has kindly agreed to open up early for us! If any members from Cheadle want to come, then just let us know via the WhatsApp, and we’ll facilitate that. We’re looking to sort out some refreshments and entertainment. It’ll be a great way of showing our presence at the end of Week 6, as well as a chance for everyone to get together. Keep an eye open for more details.

Our campaign is in the Press (again)

Fran Heathcote, the PCS General Secretary, has written to Cat Little, the Chief Operating Officer for the entire Civil Service, and called for the staff administering the Pension Scheme to be brought back into the Civil Service.

The story has been picked up by Civil Service World, including Fran’s comment to the Chief Operating Officer that “PCS are firmly of the view that the very integrity of the administration of the CSPS is now at risk”.

You can read the article here and you can read the letter in full here.

More TUPE Tales

One of the great questions we had at the members’ meeting, was what happens about the TUPE transfer ‘measures’ that MyCSP have already gone through, while we’ve been locked out of the talks?

Members were assured at the meeting that we’ve made it clear that we would want to revisit the terms and conditions that have already been discussed, and we’d presented MyCSP with a simple proposed agreement, that would have allowed us to go through the material already discussed, but would not unduly delay the process. Disappointingly, MyCSP weren’t interested in any of that.

If we were to be excluded for the whole of the TUPE talks, and there were changes to terms and conditions that we would not have agreed, then we would be forced into a position where we would be forced to fight to get the conditions of service changed back; and nobody – especially a new employer – would want that on their plate on Day 1.

At the members’ meeting we agreed to publish the proposals we sent to MyCSP, to show everyone how reasonable we’d been on this. You can read the proposed agreement here.

We’re not sure these words mean what he thinks they mean

On the subject of our extended strike, we understand that MyCSP’s Chief Executive has now written to all staff to say “Please be assured that as well as continuing with our mitigation actions, we are continuing to work closely with Capita, Cabinet Office and PCS behind the scenes to explore ways to bring this to a swifter conclusion.”

Our negotiators haven’t heard a word from the Chief Executive, since he rejected our proposed agreement more than a week ago; so that’s an interesting definition of “working closely”.

Still, as it has been throughout, our door is always open to meaningful talks to resolve this dispute.

Campaign update

This week we started our talks with Capita about the company recognising PCS, following the planned transfer of Civil Service Pensions work in December.

Our team had constructive discussions, and we have provided Capita with some proposed wording for an agreement; and they are going to respond to our proposals ahead of our next meeting, scheduled for mid-August.

Additionally, Fran Heathcote, the PCS General Secretary, has written to the Chief Operating Officer for the Civil Service, calling on her to bring the administration of the Pension Scheme back in-house.

We’re holding another members’ meeting on Friday 8 August, and we’ll be providing a campaign update there.

MyCSP in the headlights again

Civil Service World has again featured our campaign, with the news that our strike has been extended, and that the union has written to the Public Accounts Committee, describing MyCSP’s comments to the committee as “misleading”.

More ‘Business as Usual’ news

MyCSP are still running around, telling people that it’s all still ‘business as usual’, so imagine our surprise when the Cabinet Office told PCS in a meeting on Tuesday, that when they asked MyCSP to provide quotes for 30 ‘Mutually Agreed Exits’, they replied they “don’t want to be involved”.

So you know things are obviously going swimmingly, when the company contracted to the Cabinet Office to provide Pension Scheme quotes, tells the Cabinet Office they don’t want to provide Pension Scheme quotes.