WEEKLY INFORMATION FROM THE COMMUNICATION WORKERS UNION
SUMMARY
Attachments or LTB's can be
emailed or downloaded from the National Site
Volume 9 Issue 48 Paragraphs 782 - 791 10 December 2004
SUMMARY
GENERAL
782 Liaison Meetings with
CWU Group
783 Book Reviews
784 Legal Services, CWU
Helpline, CWU Road Assist Scheme Christmas Arrangements
785 PCS: Civil Service Job
Cuts - Strike November 5th
786 Obituary: Derrick Bavister
EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES
No items this week
HEALTH AND SAFETY
787 Noise Interference in
BT CCC
TELECOMS
788 Network Operations:
Management Communications on Attendance Patterns
789 Final Issue - Comms
for Attendance Patterns proposals to all Field Ops and Controls (NLG
& NLD)
790 Telewest: Project
Touchpoint Management Consultative Briefing No.4
FINANCIAL SERVICES
No items this week
POSTAL
791 Interim Productivity
Scheme - Progress Report - Week 35
LETTERS TO BRANCHES
572
02.12.04 Clientlogic Pay Review 2005 - Sally Bridge
573
02.12.04 Pay and Major Change - Dave Ward
574
02.12.04 Ballots Wales TUC 2005 - Steve Baguley
575
02.12.04 CWU Organisers Network - Steve Baguley
576 02.12.04 BTECC Election of Lay Representatives - Jeannie Drake
577
02.12.04 The LGV Driver Resourcing - Terry Pullinger
578 06.12.04 2004 Labour Party Annual Conference - CWU Delegation
Policy - GS
579
06.12.04 BT Disciplinary Process and Recovery of Losses - Simon Sapper
580
07.12.04 Elections of LGB&T TUC, STUC Disability TUC, Womens
TUC, Black Workers TUC, Labour Party Women's Conference Results -
Steve Baguley
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GENERAL
782
Liaison Meetings with CWU Group MPs
Meetings with CWU supported MPs have now been arranged for 2005 and,
for your information, I list below the dates of the meetings and
those nominated to attend:
14 December
John Holmes, Steve Fishwick,
Andy Kerr, Graham Colk and a representative from Wales.
18 January
John Holmes, Dave Warren,
Manny Blake, Karen Rose and a
South East Region representative.
15 February
John Holmes, Chris Murphy,
Maria Exall, Graham Colk and a Midlands Region representative.
15 March
John Holmes, Joe Malone, Andy Kerr, Karen Rose and a South West
Region representative.
19 April
John Holmes, Steve Fishwick,
Manny Blake, Graham Colk and a North West Region representative.
Billy Hayes
General Secretary
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783
Book Reviews
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, £17.99 published by Doubleday
Going Postal is Terry Pratchett's 29th adult Discworld novel. As its
title indicates the novel is a satire about the Post Office and is an
ideal read for Communication Workers Union members, seeking a wry
look at their own workplace.
For readers who are unfamiliar with Pratchett's work the Discworld is
a flat planet, carried through space on the back of four giant
elephants. Its principal city is Ankh Morpork where Going Postal is set.
Going Postal's central character is Moist von Lipwig a career conman
who is given a reprieve from the gallows in order to resurrect the
once mighty Post Office, which has fallen into decay. Despite being a
habitual criminal, von Lipwig has a genuine sense of decency, buried
deep in his psyche, making it not entirely clear if he is based on
Alan Leighton or Adam Crozier.
Von Lipwig's enemies are the unscrupulous owners of the Grand Truck
Company which run the clacks, a revolutionary form of communication
which can transmit messages in a blink of an eye a form of
communication loosely based on the internet and the telephone. One
criticism of the book is that although it is set in Ankh Morpork
there are only cameo appearances by many of Pratchett's more
established characters. Despite this the book is generally up to
Pratchett's high standards, new and established Discworld fans will
enjoy the book and will find sections of it genuinely amusing.
In The Cause of Labour - History of British Trade Unionism by Rob
Sewell. Reviewed by Andy Blake, Secretary London 7.
You may or may not agree with every opinion in this book, but Rob
Sewell's account of the history of the British trade union movement
is certainly hard hitting and thought provoking.
The author delves through 200 years of working class struggle, coming
down firmly on the side of the under dog. Rob Sewell unashamedly
takes the side of Labour in the class struggle, as well as the
radical militant traditions of the British Labour movement.
He explores the revolutionary struggles of the early underground
trade unions, which later evolved through Owenism to Chartism, the
first workers' party in history. From Model Unionism we are taken
through the rise of New Unionism and to the formation of the Labour
Party, from Black Friday to the 1984/5 miners' strike. The history is
brought bang up-to-date with a focus on unions under the Blair
government and whether unions should consider disaffiliation (to
which the author is opposed).
It's message is that those who do not learn from history will be
doomed to repeat it.
In The Cause of Labour is now being offered at a discount rate of
£10 (normally £15) for union members, and is available from
Wellred, PO Box 50525, London E14 6WG. Add £2 for P&P and
make cheques payable to Wellred. You can also email the author at ra_sewell@yahoo.co.uk
Simon Alford
Communications Department
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784
Legal Services, CWU Helpline, CWU Road Assist Scheme Christmas Arrangements
The above services will be available up until 1.00pm Friday 24th
December 2004. The services will be closed over the Christmas period
except for the following dates and will operate between 09.00 hrs to
17.00 hrs:
Wednesday 29th December 2004
Thursday 30th December 2004
Friday 31st December 2004.
Normal service will be resumed on Tuesday 4th January 2005 operating
between 08.00 hrs and 20.00 hrs.
During the period of closure, members who wish to use the services
will be able to leave telephone and e-mail messages and their calls
will be returned as soon as possible.
All enquiries regarding the above paragraph should be directed to
Tony Rupa, Legal Services Officer.
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785
PCS: Civil Service Job Cuts - Strike November 5th
Branches would want to know that we have received the following
letter from Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of PCS:
"I am writing to thank your members for the marvellous
solidarity they displayed on the day of the PCS national strike on
November 5th. I have received numerous messages from our
representatives pointing out that CWU members did not cross our
picket lines and that their actions gave our pickets a huge boost.
I would be grateful if you would pass my thanks on to your members
through the normal channels."
The General Secretary attended and spoke at one of the PCS Rallies in
Nottingham and was well received. Thanks to all those CWU members who
offered their support.
Any enquiries on this paragraph should be addressed to the General
Secretary's Department quoting the Reference: GS 17.5
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786
Obituary: Derrick Bavister
It is with great sadness that Romford Amal branch has to inform you
that our former branch secretary, Derrick Bavister, sadly passed away
during the night of Monday, December 6.
Derrick was area processing rep and Romford Area delivery rep, going
on to become branch secretary from 1985 until his medical retirement
in 1997.
He gave many years service to this branch and the union and will be
very sadly missed by all.
We have not been advised of arrangements for Derrick's funeral but as
soon as we have any information, we will communicate this to you.
In the meantime, should anyone wish to contact the branch please call
the union room at Romford, on 01708 777 303/2 or 01708 777 365
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HEALTH AND SAFETY
787
Noise Interference in BT CCC
Please find attached updates on the most recent developments
regarding noise interference in BT CCC.
BT is rolling out the GN Netcom 8210 amplifier unit for installation
across CCC and the installation programme is attached.
Can I ask Branches to monitor this equipment and in particular to
forward to the Health and Safety Department any instances of Noise
Interference after the GN Netcom 8210 amplifier units have been installed.
Enquiries on this issue should be addressed to Dave Joyce, National
Health, Safety and Environment Officer, quoting reference NS38
Att:
G59i G59ii G59iii
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TELECOMS
788
Network Operations: Management Communications on Attendance
Patterns
Attached for the information of Branches is a copy of an internal
briefing which management will be releasing to all the affected OUC's
via its Enterprise Communication Network.
Brian Healy
Assistant Secretary
Attachment
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789
Final Issue - Comms for Attendance Patterns proposals to all Field
Ops and Controls (NLG & NLD)
"As you all know I have been championing the need for a
workforce that is available 24 hours a day in response to our
customer's demands and expectations. We have had a team working on
this issue for several months evaluating the arrival patterns of our
work, the volumes driving call-outs, and the most problematic areas
for customer satisfaction. The team has completed their analysis and
have presented it to me. I think that this is an outstanding piece of
work, and we have worked very closely with CWU and Connect over a
number of months in an effort to make these plans a reality.
Let me be absolutely clear about the necessity for doing this.
At present the volumes of repair work that hits our queues between
16:15pm and 19:15pm are approximately 14% of our entire workload. Our
scheduled resource level for this period is less than 5%, and as such
we are continually failing our repair targets for some of the most
important customers to BT.
There is a similar story for Saturdays, which is becoming more and
more of a standard working day for a lot of our customers. Repair
activity on a Saturday now stands at 28% of those activities hitting
our queues during Monday - Friday, whereas less than 1% of our field
resource is scheduled to meet this demand.
These figures are not just statistics with no substance behind them.
The impact of failing our customers during these periods is clearly
manifesting itself very visibly in our Customer Satisfaction
measures. Consistently, our worst Customer Satisfaction measure is
the question about our service levels at evenings and weekends. On
average we struggle to hit 65% satisfaction with our customers and we
cannot simply stand by and wait for these scores to result in lost
business to BT. We, all of us have a responsibility to reverse this
negative trend.
Before I go into the details behind the plan, let me say that this
plan is supportive of our need to hire additional resources as
previously announced and in no way reduces our requirement for
permanent resources. It is very simply an effort to be available when
our customers need us and to optimize the time that we make resources
available to the best of our ability.
Today, we manage over 400 different attendance patterns in Network
Operations. We are focused on trying to reduce those numbers so that
we have fewer variations to manage thus standardising our scheduling
of work and people's time-off. In addition to some of our existing
attendance arrangements, we have also designed a series of new
attendance patterns that are geared to spreading our available hours
around the clock. In each pattern, we have identified a minimum
number of team members that we need to support that pattern in order
to successfully cover our workload. Shortly you will be given the
opportunity to review all options and indicate your choices for the
patterns that you would prefer to work.
We have elected to keep our three most popular patterns: the 9-day
fortnight, 14-day 3-week and the 17-day 4-week. We will be asking
that these patterns standardise to a specific start and finish time
so that we are only managing one rolling schedule per pattern,
however you will be able to opt to stay on this work-day pattern,
should you so choose.
I understand that it has been a long time goal to establish a 4-day
workweek or even a 3-day week. To that end, we will be offering a
4-day week, rostered between Monday - Friday. We will also have the
ability to offer a small percentage of our patterns in a 3-day option
that will give us the necessary weekend cover.
Finally, the base of our plan is to establish night working teams in
several of our larger cities. These patterns will be offered where
required based on repair volumes and work that can easily be done at
night; they will be rostered from Monday to Saturday (Sundays in some
controls functions) and will carry a premium as a percentage of base
pay.
Our goal here is simple: to standardise on fewer patterns, to
increase our availability to our customers thereby improving customer
satisfaction, and to realise our people's desire for 3-day and 4-day
work patterns. I hope to be able to run our options exercise next
month. We will then take a few weeks to review the requests, make the
pattern awards, and schedule our implementation as quickly as
possible.
I appreciate that exercises such as this are complicated, sometimes
emotional, and always represent an element of risk, as does any
change. However, I believe that this change has been well studied and
documented, and it has also been well planned with considerable input
from the CWU and Connect. This would bring about a significant
improvement in our ability to meet our customers' needs.
All parties believe these patterns bring benefits to our people and
our customers, and it is a very positive sign that the negotiation
now centres on agreeing the final detail of the proposals. We will be
sending out further comms on this subject very shortly and there will
also be a website with a question and answer section where you will
be able to find out more over the coming weeks.
I look forward to getting the options exercise out to you so that you
can consider your choice of pattern and respond. Before closing, I
should also note that we do have a very few specific patterns that
were previously agreed under personal terms due to specific family
situations/circumstances and these patterns will indeed be honoured.
I appreciate the work of the teams that have been preparing us for
this change and look forward to a successful implementation taking us
one more step forward in our goal of achieving customer satisfaction.
Best regards,
Deb"
Brian Healy
Assistant Secretary
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790
Telewest: Project Touchpoint Management Consultative Briefing No.4
Attached for the information of Branches is a copy of an internal
Telewest Management briefing which has been released.
Brian Healy
Assistant Secretary
Attachment
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POSTAL
791
Interim Productivity Scheme - Progress Report - Week 35
We are monitoring the introduction of the new productivity schemes
nationally and within that process we have requested progress
reports. Please find attached the latest progress report I have
received on the deployment of the Mail Centre/Distribution schemes
for your information.
It should be noted that all of the Business' planned headcount
reduction figures are subject to agreements being concluded locally
on how the financial savings should be achieved. In addition, actual
headcount reductions stated include members who have resigned, etc.
All enquiries regarding the content of this paragraph should be
addressed to Martin Collins, Assistant Secretary Indoor Department,
quoting reference number L.300.42(a).
Att:
PE64