'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.