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.