Sent PAC-ing

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) published its latest report into the handling of Civil Service Pensions administration today (24 October) and it’s jam-packed full of material that supports our position.

The report says that “in order to ensure a smooth transition from MyCSP to Capita it is important that appropriate consideration is given to the rights of staff members transferring across”; and on the matter of union recognition, the committee’s report says:

“We queried with the Cabinet Office if it was normal practice to let a contract to an organisation that does not recognise trade unions. Although unable to give us a definitive answer at the time, the Cabinet Office subsequently wrote to the Committee to confirm that there is no government policy requiring trade union recognition in contracts. The Cabinet Office did say, however, that if non-recognition had a direct impact on performance, then it would be a concern from a value for money perspective.”

The report also offers a view about our recognition talks with Capita progressing; describing it as “…a positive development and underlines the importance of employers who supply contracts to government engaging meaningfully with unions including through formal recognition.”

The report’s recommendations include that the Cabinet Office should set-out in its response “its approach…to ensure that suppliers that it contracts with are committed to giving adequate recognition to the voice of employees, for example, through union recognition.”

Well, having a big chunk of your staff out on strike for four months (and counting) obviously has “a direct impact on performance”, and given the Public Accounts Committee’s view about the importance of engaging with unions, presumably the Cabinet Office will think-on if Equiniti have the audacity to bid for any more Civil Service work in future.

There’s plenty of other stuff in the report that we agree with; including:

• that the Cabinet Office should consider the cost and benefits of delivering the administration in-house; and 

• in any event, when consideration is given to work being outsourced, Cabinet Office should set-out how it intends to ensure that it has enough commercial capacity and contract management skills so it can hold the contractor to account.

It's all good stuff. You can read the report here. Go on. You know you want to. 

Rinse and Repeat

PCS negotiators met with Equiniti’s Human Resources team on Friday 10 October; and sadly, it went more or less as predicted.

They started off saying they weren’t prepared to agree our 2-page draft agreement, adding there was nothing in it for MyCSP to recognise the union, because as far as they were concerned, there was no bargaining left to be done.

The employer again said that we weren’t prepared to compromise. We pointed-out that PCS were the only party who had offered any real proposals and counter-proposals; and all Equiniti had done was reject them, and offered nothing meaningful in response.

They argued that they had talked about allowing us into the TUPE talks (which, by the way, was never a formal proposal from them, apart from that one time they said PCS could look at what had already been agreed with the Employee Forum, but we wouldn’t be allowed to change anything).

'If you don't like that excuse, we have others'

We reminded them that our original position was put forward on the basis that at that time, Equiniti had said that they didn’t want to foist recognition on Capita; but then when Capita agreed to the principle of Day 1 recognition, that excuse no longer existed.

We also reminded them of their next excuse, which was that their staff didn’t want a union, and then their own plebiscite disproved that as well.

The 'All-England Dummy-Spitting' School of Bargaining

PCS went on to say that even so, Equiniti could have made a counter-proposal, but they didn’t; they simply said they rejected our agreement. We made the point that “Proposals and counter-proposals: Everywhere else, that’s how negotiations work; but clearly not in Equiniti.”

We asked them again, that if they had one, what their counter-proposal was; and they then implied (but no more than that) that allowing us into TUPE talks was a possibility. We asked for the counter-proposal in writing by early this week (w/c 13 October).

As we said, in the past, the only time they’d suggested that we could be invited into TUPE talks, they said we could see the material that they’d been discussing since the summer, but we couldn’t change anything. Even if they do respond early this week, it is conceivable that they’ll regurgitate that line, but we’ll see.

Aside from the recognition issue, we raised the issue of Christmas Leave, and strikers not being given the opportunity to book Christmas Leave, leaving open the possibility of them having less favourable Leave options open to them. The employer said that they would come back on that issue.

'If it walks like a duck, and quacks like  a duck, it's probably...'

One final thing: we called them “Equiniti” all the way through the meeting, and they became more than a bit agitated; and kept saying “it’s MyCSP” - so they’re clearly sensitive about that.

In any event, we reminded them that MyCSP is “wholly owned by Equiniti, they’ve all got Equiniti email addresses; and none of its bosses will be made redundant when the company closes, because they’ll all go back to their day job in Equiniti.” We added that “When we’re writing to Crown Commercial and doing our media releases, we’ll be making that point, especially where future contracts are concerned”.