Management have today
announced the start of meaningful consultation for compulsory redundancy for up
to 94 AA’s in DWP. Meaningful consultation is the start of the formal process that
leads to compulsory redundancies.
The AA’s involved are those
that management have deemed to be ‘surplus’. They are spread over all parts of
DWP including:
Job Centres
Benefit offices due to be
closed
Contact Centres (not TPIP
sites)
Pension Centres
Shared Services
Corporate Centre
Corporate Centre
The staff involved will be
notified on May 14th that they have been placed into meaningful consultation.
The exact number of staff being placed into meaningful consultation may be
reduced as some of the AA’s may still be offered promotion opportunities
following the recent AA to AO promotion exercise.
No Business Reason
PCS condemns this decision to start meaningful
consultation. There is no real business reason for doing so as there is plenty
of work for all of these AA staff to do. DWP faces rising workloads and
increasing unemployment. At such a time it is madness to threaten staff with
compulsory redundancy. Every AA employed can take routine work off other staff
allowing them to focus on duties appropriate to their grade. The removal of
AA’s only means that higher graded staff have to do their own AA work instead.
Second time in meaningful
consultation
Some of the AA’s being placed into meaningful
consultation today are the same staff that were placed into meaningful
consultation back in 2007. They were
only finally taken out of meaningful consultation two years later,
following the agreement that PCS reached
with DWP to resolve the 2007 DWP Pay dispute.
Plenty of AA work
Management have always
claimed that there is no permanent role for these staff in DWP. PCS asserted back in 2007 that there was plenty of meaningful work for
these AA’s to do then. The fact that they have continued to be employed on
important and worthwhile work since then has proved PCS to be right. There is no reason why they should not continue to be
employed to do this work.
Breach of 2009 agreement
PCS is very concerned that moving some of these AA’s, who were taken out
of meaningful consultation in 2009, back into meaningful consultation again now
is a breach of the agreement that PCS reached with DWP in 2009 to resolve the 2007 pay dispute. PCS is also concerned that AA’s who were offered redundancy in 2007 will
now be offered it again but on the greatly reduced terms of the new Civil Service
Compensation Scheme.
PCS will defend AA members
PCS is determined to
defend our AA members and to fight for their job security. We have successfully
done so in the past and will do so again. We will make it clear to DWP
management that we believe that none of our AA members should be made redundant
when they wish to continue in employment with DWP. The union will do everything
possible to protect their jobs, including, if necessary, balloting members
across DWP to defend these members’ jobs.
