Message from Ralph Pettingill Regional Convenor
North East Region Convenor’s report
Barnardos Unison AGM March 2006.
Ralph Pettingill
The last 12 months have seen an increasing in demand on myself and the three other stewards in the region. Liz Jefferies, Elaine Hope and Paul Forbes
We have been involved in five consultations in the last 12 months, with two more emerging at the time of writing. These have been very varied. Increasingly management in People Section (HR as was) are taking initiative in informal discussions and early involvement.
Types of consultation
- Service closure, due to termination of funding and change of priorities by central government & local authority change of priorities (no redundancies).
- Service re-organisation and move of premises. Change of funding , services no longer required in the same form by local authority partners. No redundancy of members, but continuing issues regarding the impact of relocation of premises. Two members currently being represented by us.
- Change to service management structure initiated by AD. Still under discussion. Significant friction between AD and staff team.
- Local authority funder withdrawing at short notice, threat of redundancy to all 11 staff. (not all members). Members currently being represented. Little scope in the region for redeployment at present.
- Shop closure, due to sudden end to lease , though this shop had not been profitable. Staff redundancy negotiated.
- Two more consultations, at least one of which will lead to loss of posts, due to loss of local authority funds and need to save voluntary funds. Notice received of another consultation, no details at the time of writing.
These consultations are very demanding of our time as stewards. They present a challenge on terms of developing systems for thinking about the business case documents, properly meeting with and consulting members and the ensuing representation and support issues. We have learned a lot through these processes.
LJF
We now have three local representatives, We are still learning a lot about this process. We plan to ask management side to take on responsibility for minuting the meetings, as they have admin. resource to do this
Other work
I have had a steady stream of communication with members regarding general and membership enquiries. There is some demand for meetings. So far we have held two meetings in services, in response to particular requests and separate to formal consultations.
We are involved in and affected by the changes to the PRIU.
We have represented members in a number of situations. These include
- returning to work after sickness leave
- termination of employment on health grounds
- giving support to a member planning a grievance.
We have identified at least three people as work place representatives. We hope to involve more people in this way in the next 12 months.
Some of what we’ve learned so far
- As a group of stewards it is vital for us to stay in good contact. We do our best to meet regularly (about monthly at present, though we’ve not managed this early this year).
- We need to co-work in order to build our confidence. We’ve benefited from the fact that three of us work in regional office, which makes meeting even more convenient.
- We are wary of being co-opted as a branch of the HR/people section. It would be easy to become apologists for Barnardos policy.
- Consultation documents ( the ‘business case’) vary greatly in quality. We are encouraging management to put more attention into these, to save time, anxiety and effort later in the process. Managers need to get help and support from HR/people section. These messages seem to be taken on board.
- We need to develop our own independent thinking about issues and strategy. This takes time and experience. It’s invaluable to have Unison colleagues who are good listeners. We still need lots of support from Bob as branch secretary, though the nature of this is changing-more like consultation/ supervision.
- We are very much in favour of a secondment branch development post. We see a risk of stewards and exec. Members getting overwhelmed by the demands which are surfacing, then not having the breathing space to carry out essential regional development which is necessary for our long term wellbeing.
