Yesterday, we had our regular fortnightly meeting with corporate HR representatives where we keep each other up to date with developments on the industrial relations front with the city council.
First item on the agenda was Pay Progression - or the outcome of the recent annual process for giving increments to staff based on the Performance and Development Review (PDR) system of measuring performance against objectives. This year just over a quarter (26%) of the 21,000 non-schools staff received an annual increment in pay because of their PDR score. This is a big drop from the previous year when it was around 50%.
We are gathering as much information as we can about the payment of increments for the council. In the meeting we were given information by Grade and by Directorate and some breakdowns by gender, ethnicity and disability status. However the information we had did not allow us to test whether there are any equality differences in those who got an increment and those who did not. We have asked for further information to be provided.
We also requested equality breakdowns for those who were set the higher scoring "challenging" objectives, which you need to have to have any real chance of getting an A or B score in the PDRs.
Furthermore, we have requested similar information on the distribution of the A to E scores by equality groupings. The A - E score is important not just for determining whether a member of staff gets an annual increment, but also accounts for around a quarter of the score used in the redundancy selection criteria which could make the difference between being made redundant or getting a new job in a restructuring exercise. We have very grave concerns about the fairness of the PDR system, and whether there is any hidden discrimination in the scores given.
Next we discussed the council's review of trade union facility time. There was a Scrutiny Review last year which recommended a review of facility arrangements. The Council informed us that they intended to give 6 months notice of withdrawal now from the current facilities agreements and to commence consultation about their replacement. We have huge concerns that this is putting a gun to our heads during the review period. We have suggested that the council talks with us within the review before giving notice of terminating the agreements so we can have some confidence about where we are heading. The outcome of the discussion is unclear. We hope they will listen to our concerns. This will be a test of how much confidence we can have of the outcome of this review. There will be terms of reference drawn up and another meeting in a fortnight.
Then we received a briefing about proposals for trading in HR services. They face a £4.5m cut in their £25m budget, over two and a half years, having cut 40% already. So they are proposing to identify core HR services which they will provide free to council Directorates and then to introduce a charging system for any additional work directorates may want from HR. They are also planning to sell HR services externally, probably through setting up an HR Wholly Owned Company (WOC) into which HR staff can be seconded for short periods, or for part of their working week to undertake work of chargeable external bodies. HR also propose to make use of small often sole trader consultancy firms on a short term basis to deal with any temporary increase in work from the internal and external charging system. The consultancy charges we were told would be equivalent to the salaries of internal staff.
This set of ideas is news to us. We will have to give serious thought to this. We oppose the use of management consultants in the council, which still costs millions of pounds a year. And we feel there is enough internal expertise and enough people with these skills being threatened with redundancy. And we are worried about the WOCs. Are these a first step towards even more privatisation ?
Finally we had an update on the Customer First business transformation process, which at this point in time involves attempts to transfer various groups of staff dealing with calls and contact from the public to Capita's Birmingham Call Centre. If it moves, Capita wants to take it over and make a profit out of it. We are resisting all these privatisations and also attempting to negotiate the best terms for our members where we are unsuccessful in stopping them.
On interesting case in point is the Older Peoples Access Service which handles enquiries about adult social services. The council wants to transfer them to Capita. But we and the OPAS staff are standing in the way of the steam roller. In recent weeks, the consultation has been suspended by management. It appears that they are re-examining the financial and business case for the transfer. We are insisting on seeing the draft contract for the Capita service, the business case and all the documentation required for any TUPE transfer or TUPE/secondment arrangement. We are told that the option of seconding staff to the Capita service is still possible. We and the staff of the service are fighting for this, if we cannot stop the privatisation.
The OPAS service is one of the most critical and sensitive public services to be considered for transfer to Capita. The calls they deal with from the public about adult social care can be very complex and sophisticated. They are often responding to people who are going through huge crises in their lives and those of the people they are caring for. They need the greatest sensitivity, understanding and expertise. What we don't want is a privatised call centre but a caring public service.
So this was just one of our regular meetings, but all the issues addressed are fundamental to our members and to our services.
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