The
following details have been provided by the PCS DWP Group:
DWP has announced today their plans to
compulsorily transfer 10 offices into the Child Maintenance Group (CMG). The
transfers are due to take place between January 2014 and March 2015. The
offices, with estimated dates of transfer, are:
Walsall Pension
Centre (Jan-Mar 2014)
Plymouth Benefit
Centre (Jan – Mar 2014)
Leicester Pension
Centre (April to June 2014)
Leicester Benefit
Centre (July – Sept 2014)
Coatbridge Benefit
Centre (July – Sept 2014)
Newcastle Contact
Centre (July – Sept 2014)
Newcastle Benefit
Centre (Sept – Dec 2014)
Glasgow Springburn
Contact Centre (Sept – Dec 2014)
Kilmarnock Benefit Centre
(Jan – Mar 2015)
Greenock Benefit
Centre (Jan – Mar 2015)
Management intend to move 2,000 staff
into CMG through these transfers. The general intention is to transfer all of
the staff on site into CMG. However there are some sites where the grade mix
does not reflect the grade mix required by CMG and so some staff are expected
to remain in their current business and not transfer to CMG.
Staff who do not transfer will either
have work moved to them or will be redeployed into other DWP offices. Management
were unable to clarify how these staff will be identified or selected, but are
most likely to be in the AA, EO or HEO grades. Management have assured PCS that this
transfer is not a precursor to compulsory redundancy for any of the staff in
these offices.
These transfers come on top of the
announcements earlier this year of staff transfers to CMG at Tyne View Park
Pensions, York and Ravenhurst Benefit Centres, Hastings Benefit Integrity
Centre and the Visiting Booking Centre in Birmingham.
Garston
and Bootle Contact Centres
In addition to the transfer of these 10
sites, management will also be seeking around 200 staff from Garston and Bootle
Contact Centres to agree to transfer on a voluntary basis to Birkenhead CSAC.
Management are confident that they will be able to secure these numbers through
voluntary transfers. If this is not achieved, management have committed
themselves to talking to PCS again before
deciding if any other measures may be required.
Why
do CMG need extra staff?
CMG requires these additional staff in
order to be able to deliver the new Child Maintenance scheme while also
continuing to administer the old Child Maintenance scheme. The requirement for
these 2,000 additional staff for CMG is based on DWP’s assumptions of the numbers
of people who will take-up the new Child Maintenance Scheme. Once the new
scheme is fully implemented, and as the numbers on the old scheme decline, the
staffing requirements of CMG are also likely to reduce accordingly. CMG’s long
term plan is to concentrate the vast majority of its work in the main CSAC’s,
but this is not expected to happen before 2016.
How
have these sites been selected?
Management made clear that the reason
was location. CMG management were keen to have the transferring sites in geographical
clusters, located as near as possible to their existing main locations. This is
because it makes it easier for them to manage rather than having the offices
spread around the country. It will also mean that many of the staff
transferring into CMG should be within redeployment distance of the main CMG
sites.
However CMG have stated that there are
no immediate plans to close any of the transferring offices and move all the
staff into nearby CMG sites. Any future estates rationalisation would only be
done as part of the ongoing DWP review of all DWP sites.
Impact
on terms and conditions
Staff will continue to work in their
existing office and there will be no changes to members’ contractual terms and
conditions. However CMG does operate some departmental HR policies differently
to DWP Operations. In particular they operate a more restrictive flexi time
policy than the flexi arrangements that applies in most of DWP Operations. Also
CMG does not allow its staff to have a 10 minute morning and afternoon break.
The feedback from members who transferred into CMG in the earlier wave of
transfers has been overwhelmingly negative once members came face to face with
the reality of CMG’s unnecessarily restrictive working arrangements
PCS
demands no detrimental changes
PCS has pressed
management to agree to no detrimental changes to these working arrangements as
a result of this change of duties. There is no reason at all why being rebadged
as CMG should lead to the loss of paid breaks or to worse flexi arrangements.
We fear that management may be about to make the same mistake as happened with
the TPIP transfer where a change of role was combined with an attack on members
working conditions.
Further
talks agreed
PCS has made this
case to management very strongly. Management have now agreed to further
discussions, after today’s announcement, with PCS on this issue
to try and agree working arrangements that can be agreeable to all concerned.
This transfer should not be used to impose worse conditions on the staff
transferring, but rather to harmonise working conditions at the optimum level
across all of DWP Operations, including CMG. PCS is continuing
to seek a resolution to this issue to protect members working conditions.
PCS’
Reaction
PCS condemns the decision
to strip 2,000 staff out of DWP Operations. While we welcome the decision to
create an additional 2,000 staff in CMG we firmly believe that these extra
posts should have been filled by new recruits and not by robbing staff from
other parts of DWP.
PCS does not
accept that either the Pensions, Benefits or Network Services Directorates are
in a position to sustain the loss of so many staff. Workloads remain very high
across DWP Operations, with our members operating under excessive pressure and
stress.
There are huge backlogs of work in
Pensions, targets regularly being missed in Benefits and annual leave is
already subject to excessive restrictions in DWP Operations. Incredibly, at the
same time that Contact Centre Services has agreed to lose 2 Contact Centres,
the management there are talking to their staff about what extra measures may
be needed to meet the current shortage of staff.
Thousands
of jobs to be cut
It makes no sense to cut staffing in
DWP Operations in this way. These 2,000 staff cuts come on top of the recent
exit package announcement seeking 1,700 staff to agree to leave DWP Operations
in March 2014. When attrition is taken into account, Operations will have lost
several thousand staff, but with no reductions in workloads. Cuts on this scale
can only lead to more backlogs, more missed targets, more calls left unanswered
and ever worse customer service. It can be expected that this will also put
additional pressure on members in Job Centres when benefits go unpaid.
PCS has put all
of these concerns to DWP management. We received a rather complacent response
claiming that there is capacity to lose all these staff, but with little
explanation as to where this additional capacity was. Given the anticipated
increases in workloads through the recent announcements of increased
conditionality, and the need to convert 8 million claims to Universal Credit by
2017, there is no obvious spare capacity within Operations.
More
staff not less
Management should be recruiting more
staff now. We fear that the loss of these staff from Operations will simply
place even more pressure on members to meet ever-increasing targets. This is
unacceptable. 25,000 staff have left DWP since May 2010. DWP must stop
haemorrhaging staff and begin to recruit and promote staff across all parts of
DWP to end the remorseless pressure our members face and to deliver the high
quality customer service the public expects.
