LEICESTER CITY COUNCIL PROPOSE CHANGES TO T’s & C’s
The following letter had been sent to all members working for Leicester City Council, from Sian McClarence, Regional Organiser
Dear Colleague,
Some of you may already be aware that your employer has made approaches to the Joint Trade Unions in a bid to enter into consultation with us over proposed changes to your terms and conditions of employment.
This is an incredibly serious issue and has the potential to affect all employees both now and, of course, for ever more.
What are the proposals?
For anyone who is not aware, the proposals that have been put forward to us at the moment include the following headline points;
*cut your working week to 35 hours - with, of course, a cut in pay to match.
*cut sick pay to 3 months full pay and 3 months half pay
*removal of Soulbury grades
*review of special leave provisions
*move from free parking provision to charging staff for parking
*removal of lump sum payment for essential car users and apply a mileage rate of 40p for ALL car users.
*a ‘flexible working framework agreement’ to make better use of annualised hours or compressed working to provide services over the hours which best suit service users.
*cease payment of professional subscriptions
This is not an exhaustive list but, for the moment, covers all the main points on the table.
Why have Leicester City Council put forward these proposals?
Obviously, because of the deficit in the budget, the Council are looking at ways to save money. They claim that these proposals could save millions of pounds. They do not claim that these proposals will save any of the potential 582 redundancies that are currently likely. However, they claim that it may avoid the need for a further 217 redundancies.
Management also claim that in some areas employees have made some of these proposals themselves.
What is the GMB doing about this?
The Joint Trade Union side have asked Leicester City Council to provide us with more detail around some of their proposals. To date we have not received a response.
We will be making clear that we will not enter into consultation on these matters until;
a. we have these details from them and
b. we have a clear understanding from our members that they would want us to begin such consultation (if members do not want us to participate then we won’t).
In addition, we are now starting a consultation exercise with members in order that we can take a view from you on the general principal of entering into such negotiations and also whether there are alternative proposals that you would wish us to put forward on your behalf. Equally we would want to know if our members are of the view that they are not prepared to give up their hard won terms and conditions.
To this end, we will be holding a series of feedback meetings beginning week commencing 9th May 2011 at the following venues;
Leycroft Road Alliance House
Sulgrave Road The Town Hall
Ian Marlow Centre
Exact dates and times are still to be arranged but please see your local rep for more details.
Alternatively if you are unable to attend any of the meetings please let us have your thoughts in the following ways;
Telephone - Branch office on 0116 2232276 E-mail –
Write to – GMB Leicester Services Branch, Alliance House, 6 Bishop Street, Leicester, LE1 6AF
What do you need to do?
The most important thing currently is to give some serious thought to what your view is on these proposals and feed that back to us in one of the ways outlined above. Your thoughts will inform our next move.
In addition, we would urge you not to take any decision to volunteer your terms and conditions away lightly. There is no guarantee that any of this will save any jobs in the long term. We would not want you to give things up in the hope of saving your own or your colleague’s jobs only to find that a few months down the line your jobs are at risk again. There is no guarantee that if you offer up these things this time your employer won’t be looking for something else from you next time.
We fully understand that you may want to do all that you can to protect jobs, but please consider very carefully.
Also we understand that some people might not be affected by the current proposals, but before making any decision please stop to consider whether you can be absolutely sure that you will not be reliant on sick pay in the future? Please also consider whether there might be any other proposals in the pipeline that could affect you.
The really important thing is that you give consideration to all of this and feed it back to us.
We look forward to hearing from you.