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WEEKLY INFORMATION FROM THE COMMUNICATION WORKERS UNION
SUMMARY

Attachments or LTB's can be emailed or downloaded from the National Site
Volume 10 Issue 11 Paragraphs 182-198 18 March 2005

SUMMARY
GENERAL
182 Liaison Meetings with CWU Group
183 Headquarters Printing and Reprographic Services
184 Health & Safety Stage III
185 Union Skills II Course
EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES
No items this week
HEALTH AND SAFETY
186 Workers' Memorial Day - 28th April 2005
187 Workers' Memorial Day CWU activities - 28th April 2005
188 Occupational Road Safety
TELECOMS
189 Telewest - Service Shift Patterns
190 One IT - Performance Management of Senior CWU Representatives
191 One IT - A New Programme - Enterprise Information Platform
192 Integrated Network Management (INM) - Latest Briefing and Q&As
193 BT Wholesale - Network Engineering Journey
194 Network Engineering Journey - Pilot Update
195 BT Wholesale Operations - Broadband Services Quality Assurance Analyst Rebanding
POSTAL
196 Individual Grievance Procedure Royal Mail Group
197 Coventry Hub Operatives Pay Agreement 2004
198 Contact Centre (Sales) & Admin Pay Agreement 2004
LETTERS TO BRANCHES
109 10/03/05 Bank Holiday Pay Arrangement March/April 2005 - Dave Ward
121 10/03/05 Individual Grievance Procedure - Ray Ellis
122 11/03/05 Delivering Quality - The Post Office in the Public Sector - GS
123 11/03/05 BT Home Computing Scheme - Temporary Suspension - Bill McClory
124 11/03/05 Network Operations Attendance Pattern - Brian Healy
125 14/03/05 RM Engineering Territory Reps - Ray Ellis
126 14/03/05 Coventry Hub Operative Pay Agreement 2004 Ballot Results - Terry Pullinger
127 14/03/05 Parcelforce Contact Centre Sales and Admin Pay Agreement 2004 Ballot Result - Terry Pullinger
128 14/03/05 Pay And Major Change LAs in Royal Mail - Martin Collins
129 14/03/05 Royal Mail and Logistic Pay April 2005 - Dave Ward
130 15/03/05 Reorganisation in BT Directories - Glynis Winestein
131 15/03/05 Workers' Memorial Day - Dave Joyce
132 16/03/05 Workers' Memorial Day - CWU Activities - Dave Joyce
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GENERAL
182
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:
19 April
John Holmes, Steve Fishwick,
Manny Blake, Graham Colk and a North West Region representative.
Billy Hayes
General Secretary

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183
Headquarters Printing and Reprographic Services
Branches and Representatives will wish to know that CWU Headquarters have recently acquired new reprographics equipment. The purpose of broadcasting this information is to inform you that we are now able to offer a print service to branches that we believe will be within a price range that you will find competitive. Amongst the services we can provide are colour or black & white posters, leaflets, booklets etc. It is not possible to produce a price list as prices will vary dependent on each individual job based on quantity, timescale, delivery requirements etc. If you would like more information about this service or wish to receive a quote for a particular piece of work then please ring or email Jacquie Winter, Acting Head of Post & Reprographics. 020 8971 7218
jwinter@cwu.org.

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184
Health & Safety Stage III
A Health and Safety Stage III has been organised to be held at the Education and Training Centre at Alvescot Lodge. All courses held at Alvescot Lodge are accredited with the National Open College Network. This is a fully integrated course.
The course will be held from 23 - 27 May 2005
The closing date for nominations is 7 April 2005
Applicants for this course will have already attended the Union's Health & Safety Stage I & II courses.
We particularly encourage branches to nominate women, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities and young members who are often under-represented on the CWU Education and Training Programme.
This course will give a substantive overview of the following:

All courses at Alvescot are residential. The cost of tuition, food and accommodation will be met from the General Fund. Branches are expected to meet the cost of travelling and subsistence payments. Branches requiring financial assistance from the General Fund to enable them to send students to the course must submit the request with the nomination to enable the Trustees to consider the request in time. Special leave with pay will apply.
The Education Centre can offer child-minding facilities for a maximum of three under school age children at any one time. If any applicant from your branch would like child-minding facilities, can you please advise the age and sex of the child on the application form. Further information on the child-minding arrangements will then be sent to the successful applicants.
Nominations should be made on an 'application for Union courses' form and returned to Alvescot Lodge by the closing date shown. If a member is refused a place, due to over-subscription, then indicate this on a subsequent application for another date.
Application forms should be addressed to: Trish Lavelle, Head of Education & Training, CWU Education & Training Centre, Alvescot Lodge, Alvescot, Bampton, Oxon OX18 2PY. Telephone: 01993 843373; Fax: 01993 840960; email: mtodd@cwu.org

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185
Union Skills II Course
The Communication Workers Union has organised a Union Skills II Course, to be held at the Union's Education & Training Centre at Alvescot Lodge. All courses held at Alvescot Lodge are accredited with the National Open College Network. This is a fully integrated course.
The course will be held from 20 - 24 June 2005
The closing date for nominations is 5 May 2005
Only members who have attended a Union Skills I or an Induction course are eligible for nomination. Preference, will of course, be given to those students who have been refused a previous Union Skills II Course, so this must be shown on the application form.
Those nominees who are Committee Members, Branch Representatives or Branch Officers are entitled to leave with pay. Nominations should be made on the form for Education Courses, and returned to Alvescot Lodge by the closing date shown.
Application forms should be addressed to: Trish Lavelle, Head of Education & Training, CWU Education & Training Centre, Alvescot Lodge, Alvescot, Bampton, Oxon OX18 2PY. Telephone: 01993 843373; Fax: 01993 840960; email: mtodd@cwu.org

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HEALTH AND SAFETY
186
Workers' Memorial Day - 28th April 2005
Every year more people are killed at work than in wars. Most don't die of mystery ailments, or in tragic "accidents". They die because an employer decided their safety just wasn't that important a priority. Workers' Memorial Day commemorates those workers and is held on 28 April every year. All over the world workers and their representatives conduct events, demonstrations, vigils and a whole host of other activities to mark the day. The day is intended to "remember those killed at work and to fight for the safety and health of the living". Unions are asked to focus on both areas, by considering memorials to all those killed through work but at the same time ensuring that such tragedies are not repeated. That can best be done by building trade union organisation, and campaigning for stricter enforcement with higher penalties for breaches of health & safety laws.
This year's Workers' Memorial Day theme "Employer Accountability" is particularly appropriate and in tune with CWU Conference Policy. The Union has recently responded to a HSC consultative document on safety law enforcement in which amongst other things the Union called for new positive health and safety duties for managers and directors. The Union also supported MP Stephen Hepburn's private members "Health and Safety Directors Duties" bill and has been consistently backing the call for a new Corporate Manslaughter law. When all those who are responsible for workers' health and safety are truly held to account, there will be a significant improvement in the safety and occupational health of workers. At present Directors and Senior Managers can legally insulate themselves from what is going on in the company despite those individuals being the people with the most power. That's bad for safety and bad for accountability. It's vitally important, that government acts to introduce new positive statutory health and safety responsibilities on Directors and Senior Managers without further delay and on Workers' Memorial Day we have another opportunity to voice our opinion.
We want Branches, Safety Representatives and Regional Safety Forums to organise local meetings on health and safety and the need for more corporate accountability, possibly focusing on a particular issues of concern at work, such as stress, violence, lone working or working at heights for example. Where possible get the employer to allow some form of recognition of the day, such as one minute's silence to remember anyone who's died at the workplace. Ask the HSE or local authority EHO to support local events, meetings and activities and maybe fly official flags at half-mast on the day. Write letters to the local press and contact local radio stations. Arranging events such as planting a memorial tree in a public place, putting up a plaque or dedicating something to remember workers who have been killed at the workplace or in the community. Distribute WMD Posters and purple 'forget-me-not' ribbons, the symbol of Workers' Memorial Day. Find out what other local Trade Unions or your local Hazards group, or regional TUC or Trades Council are planning and support and join in, taking part or helping organise joint events.
CWU Workers' Memorial Day Posters will be distributed from HQ shortly. Any enquiries should be addressed to Dave Joyce, National Health, Safety & Environment Officer.

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187
Workers' Memorial Day CWU activities - 28th April 2005
Workers' Memorial Day is held on 28 April every year and the CWU National Health Safety & Environment Committee will once again be supporting the event and urging the full participation of Safety Representatives, Branches and Branch Officers and Regional Health and Safety Forums. This year's Workers' Memorial Day theme "Employer Accountability" is particularly appropriate and in tune with CWU Conference Policy. We want Branches, Safety Representatives and Regional Safety Forums to organise or participate jointly with other organisations, Hazard Centres and Unions in events taking place on Workers' Memorial Day making sure the message goes out that we want proper corporate accountability and better safety law enforcement.
The Health, Safety & Environment Department will be initiating the following plan of action.

In 2004 there was another rise in workplace deaths and injury: 235 deaths, 3100 seriously injured, 130,000 people were off work due to injury for 3 days or more. Many thousands more are ill or dead from work related road accidents and ill-health. Over 23,000 deaths per year!
An overwhelming amount of research shows that the most effective way of improving workplace health and safety is to give more rights to safety reps and to punish employers that break the law.

Remember the dead, fight for the living.
All enquiries should be addressed to Dave Joyce National Health, Safety & Environment Officer quoting reference No. N4.

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188
Occupational Road Safety
At the March 2005 BT Wholesale Safety JCC a presentation was given to the Unions by Dr Will Murray of RoadRisk on Occupational Road Safety. BT Wholesale has Occupational Road Safety as a major part of improving Health and Safety and is putting together Policy, Codes and Communications on this.
The latest draft policy document is attached.
The aim, once the Occupational Road Safety Documentation is agreed, is for BT to run this out to all BT drivers.
All enquiries regarding the above should be addressed to Dave Joyce, National Health, Safety & Environment Officer quoting ref: NS32.
Att: G4

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TELECOMS
189
Telewest - Service Shift Patterns
Telewest have responded to the union with regard to the revised shift patterns. They state that the feedback the union has received nationally is not representative of what Telewest has gathered. Whilst they accept that some individuals and areas do not like the new shift pattern, the majority have indicated acceptance due to the positive aspects of increased numbers of days off and the removal of Sundays and on call responsibilities. A number of areas have also asked why they cannot implement the new rota next week as originally communicated. Telewest have not provided any demonstration or evidence as to how they have collected this feedback and therefore that is also questionable.
They do not accept our statement that engineers do not finish on time and have reported that the vast majority of engineers covering service do finish on time or earlier than 7pm and have done so for a number of months since the split from installations.
The principal decision to change the shift pattern was a result of feedback from employees that Sundays were unpopular due to lack of numbers, management cover and low availability of internal support functions to make it an effective day. By removing Sundays and on call they believe that there is less social and domestic disruption as employees are guaranteed every Sunday off, a full weekend off every 3 weeks and no more weekends and evenings on call.
Furthermore, in response to the expressed fears that team briefings would disappear under the revised shift patterns, they state that the introduction of team briefings has been a success in most areas and they aim to continue this method of communication. There are no plans to reduce or stop them and local managers will ensure that they continue.
They have already reviewed the suggestion to reduce one Saturday to 7.5 hours and confirm that they did not believe this met the needs of its customers as it reduced capacity available over a weekend; moving the 10 hour Saturday to another day in the week would provide additional capacity on this day. Unfortunately it would not be fully utilised as they do not have the same level of customer demand mid week and would not be beneficial to its customers or employees. At present Telewest currently provide 56% capacity Friday - Monday and the proposal to reduce Saturday hours would reduce this to 52% which is not acceptable to Telewest in meeting customers requirements.
As part of the original discussions, they had agreed to review the rota and working time issues arising from this 6 months after implementation. The only concession is they propose to bring this review forward and conduct this in July 2005, after the rota has been in operation for 3 months. Management has also been pressed yet again to review its position.
Branches and local representatives are asked to provide any evidence as to how Telewest management undertook a feedback exercise on the shift pattern proposals.
Brian Healy
Assistant Secretary

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190
One IT - Performance Management of Senior CWU Representatives
At a recent meeting with One IT management, the Union requested clarification on how the revised Performance Management currently in the process of being implemented and the concept of 90 day delivery cycles, will affect elected CWU senior representatives in One IT. In responding to the issues raised, One IT management stated that the day to day management e.g. advice and support, 1:1 performance and development reviews, as well as the co-ordination of DPRs at mid and end year will continue unchanged. This will, in most cases, be the responsibility of their line manager.
Brian Healy
Assistant Secretary

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191
One IT - A New Programme - Enterprise Information Platform
Head Office has been advised of an initiative designed to rationalise the in-house data/warehouse platforms for all of the Lines of Business. This is an area where many CWU represented members work and therefore the Union has requested further detailed briefing on this initative which will then be shared with Branches when it becomes available. In the meanwhile attached for the information of Branches is a copy of an internal One IT briefing on this matter.
Brian Healy
Assistant Secretary
Attachment

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192
Integrated Network Management (INM) - Latest Briefing and Q&As
Further to information given in Branch Officials Bulletin No 9/2005, paragraph 161, attached for the information of Branches is a copy of the latest briefing and a set of associated Q& As.
Brian Healy
Assistant Secretary
Attachment 1 Attachment 2

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193
BT Wholesale - Network Engineering Journey
Recently, BT Wholesale implemented both the new release of TCP Job Manager (2.2) and the first integrated release of NEJ (1.1.0) which includes PIPeR and Job Manager working together for the first time. It quickly became apparent that Job Manager was not behaving as it had in the test environment, so planners stopped using the system apart from some users in Bradford who are processing jobs to help identify the cause of the problem.
At the same time they restricted the use of NEJ1.1.0 to four users in Glasgow and Norwich while BT checked whether NEJ1.1.0 was affected by the same problems and resolved some other faults. Since then the developers and testers have been working to find, fix and test the problems and all the faults found when BT initially launched JM have been resolved.
BT now have just one issue to resolve. However, it is a big one and one that was encountered in the live environment but not in test. This makes diagnosis very difficult until BT can replicate the problem, as does the immense complexity of the systems that they are dealing with.
This all means that traditional methods of error location and resolution are not working so BT are having to take a radical approach, effectively tearing the system down and rebuilding it. They are doing this in three phases any of which may find the problem, so as soon as BT find and assess the problem they will set new dates.
BT have set up a series of checkpoints and will not be bringing users back onto the system until these have been passed. Meanwhile they are investigating why they find things in the live environment that do not appear in test and have also created a monitoring group who will proactively track network and systems reliability and performance, rather than waiting for problems to be reported.
Training of new users in Job Manager has been suspended however, eRecords people will be able to use the PIPeR component of NEJ1.1.0 on its own as normal.
Brian Healy
Assistant Secretary

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194
Network Engineering Journey - Pilot Update
Attached for the information of Branches is a copy of the management pilot documentation. The following is a list of issues raised with BT and to which the Wholesale Engineering Executive team await a response.

Branches will be advised of BT's position when it becomes available.
Brian Healy
Assistant Secretary
Attachment

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195
BT Wholesale Operations - Broadband Services Quality Assurance Analyst Rebanding
The above function has been considered for a banding review. The Quality Assurance role has developed over time. Initially, the team carried out quality checks on B2 team members by performing remote quality checks and test calls, to enable an independent assessment of adherence to procedures, mainly from a customer service perspective. Now 85% of the team's time is quality checking C3 team members who carry out a technical (diagnostic) role, who are graded as C3s.
The team has moved from checking for straightforward yes/no process adherence, to being able to understand how to repair broadband lines. To do this the team needs to be able to work on and know how to resolve broadband faults themselves. The introduction of a scheme to allow diagnostics advisors the freedom to resolve a fault as they see fit, has impacted on the skills needed to carry out the quality checks on these individuals. The quality team also now looks at all "hand offs" within the repair process, including work carried out by engineering colleagues within the exchange and customer service engineers.
The number of people affected by this re-grading is 5.
Broadband Assurance is currently based across five sites throughout the country; the Quality Assurance Analyst team is independent of the Broadband Assurance teams. It sits away from the operational people and if a manager disagrees with any of the checks carried out by the team the "Appeals" process is utilised. This involves an internal management review and a judgement on the validity of the appeal and whether to uphold or reject the appeal. It is agreed that it is not acceptable practice for team members to discuss a fault with the team as they would not know which individual had checked their work as all feedback is only visible by managers who then engage the feedback process with their team members. In addition to this the team deal with completed broadband faults; it is therefore very difficult to pinpoint individuals. All people are checked against a quality check relating to their skill level. They work hard in ensuring that they have a good relationship between the Quality team and calls are not listened into. They do not have the technology available to do this. What is used on occasion by the team on request from the Broadband Assurance Operational managers is a "mystery shopper" exercise. The team will on occasion call in and act as a service provider to ensure that the process has been adhered to. Again it would provide the evidence to managers who would, if necessary, provide feedback to the team members. This feedback instils a coaching culture and no disciplinary action would be raised just on the feedback from the team for both mystery shopper exercises and general quality checks. Assurances have been given that management are strongly committed to promoting a coaching culture within the organisation.
Brian Healy
Assistant Secretary

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POSTAL
196
Individual Grievance Procedure Royal Mail Group
Further to LTB 117/2005 which announced the vote for the Individual Grievance Procedure we have subsequently been informed that the launch date for the Grievance Procedure across the whole of Royal Mail Group will be Monday, 14th March 2005.
Any enquiries regarding this paragraph should be addressed to Ray Ellis, Assistant Secretary, Technical and Central Services Department at CWU Head Office.
Ray Ellis
Assistant Secretary

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197
Coventry Hub Operatives Pay Agreement 2004
Reproduced below for the information of Branches is the result of the Coventry Hub Operative Pay 2004 ballot.
Yes 304
No 39
Spoilt Papers 1
Total Despatched 455
Any Branch enquiries should be addressed to Terry Pullinger, Assistant Secretary quoting the reference 101.
198
Contact Centre (Sales) & Admin Pay Agreement 2004
Reproduced below for the information of Branches is the result of the Contact Centre (Sales) & Admin Pay Agreement 2004 ballot:
Yes 17
No 5
Spoilt 0
Total Despatched 49
Any Branch enquiries should be addressed to Terry Pullinger, Assistant Secretary quoting the reference 101

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