UNITE: T&G Section
Messages from the Branch Chair
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Added 18 June 2008
Chair’s Column - Dan Whittle writes:
New Flexible Contract
The branch is opposing proposals for a new flexible standard contract for MPs staff, with a longer limit on working hours (42hrs) and a longer trial period for new employees. We were told about the new contract just a couple of days before it was to be signed off.
Due to our opposition the contract has been put on hold until after the next meeting of the Advisory Panel on Members' Allowances.
We have written to the Chair of the panel, Rt Hon John Speller MP, to ask the panel to monitor the results of the new extra funding for ½ employee (asked for by our branch and recommended by the SSRB) before changing the standard contract to 42 hours per week.
We've also said the House authorities should look at better training and disciplinary practices rather than increasing the time an MP can sack a new member of staff to 9 months.
Around 100 MPs have signed EDM 1057 which calls on the House authorities to look at ways in which our branch could gain consultation rights so that it could have a say on matters such as terms and conditions. We are asking the Advisory Panel on Members' Allowances to insist the branch has a say when future changes to the standard contract are proposed.
Recognition
Our branch has found it hard to gain recognition because we are employed jointly by MPs and the House authorities. The branch Secretary (Kevin) and I met with Tony Lloyd MP, Chair of the PLP, to talk to him about the problem.
Tony said he would look at resurrecting the PLP Staff Liaison Committee, which stopped meeting in 2001. We believe the Staff Liaison Committee is an important way to allow both staff and MPs to bring forward items for discussion. In its original form it had four MPs and four members of our branch executive and met twice each year. Items could be put on the agenda from both sides.
Hopefully I will be reporting to you next month that the first meeting has been scheduled.
Interns Network
Interns do a lot of work in parliament, so I am pleased that the Unite/T&G Regional Secretary has accepted our request that they should be able to join the parliamentary staff branch at a reduced rate (about £1 a week). Sometimes new interns are still left to sink or swim, which isn’t fair.
Adam Leeder, James Green and Stacey Vickers are doing a great job of creating an Interns Network for the T&G branch. What exactly the new Interns Network will prioritise, will be a matter from its members but I hope one of its aims will be to increase the opportunities for people from outside London, and off all different backgrounds, to intern in parliament. Unionised workplaces are more likely to have equal opportunity and are less likely to discriminate – and I hope that can now extend to the recruitment of interns. The amount of casework, letters and emails we deal with on behalf of MPs is increasing, but more should be done to ensure internships are of benefit to the intern, and they are not just left to do the photocopying and filing. Their rights need to be protected and this is a big step in the right direction.
Writetothem.com
I met with one of the team behind writetothem.com, Karl Grundy, to talk about the increasing caseload, particularly from emails from his website, MPs are getting. I asked Karl to work with us to argue for more resources so that MPs an do a better job for their constituents. He had a lot of good ideas so watch this space for what we come up with.
As ever – none of the above will work without your support. Please get involved by letting your employing MP know about these campaigns, asking them to sign EDM 1057. Come along to the branch meeting or drop me an email with any suggestions.
Best wishes,
Dan
Message from the TGWU/Unite Parliamentary Branch Chair, Dan Whittle - January 2008
We are in a great position starting the New Year in terms of membership, recruitment and campaigning. We can be proud of what we’re doing. We now have over 400 members and rising, and our lobbying of the SSRB paid off with an increase in the allowances MPs have available to pay us, which was agreed to last month.
I am very pleased to have taken over the Chair at a time when many of these things were about to come into fruition, because of the hard work of the former Chair and all of the Executive Committee. There are 3 campaigns I would like to update you on: The SSRB review, the queue jumping campaign and the campaign for recognition.
The SSRB review
I hope you managed to see one of our briefings on the SSRB report which I emailed to all MPs, and which set out the gains to staff, notably:
Recommendation 20 a Staffing Expenditure increase to allow MPs to employ up to 3.5 full-time (or equivalent) members of staff; Recommendation 21 that the ceiling should be £96,630; Recommendation 22: that the ceiling on be increased by £1,720 for each fulltime equivalent member of staff based in London, up to a maximum of £102,650.
The branch’s task now is to ensure that that expenditure increase is passed on to researchers and caseworkers. As it says in the briefing we sent round to MPs: 20% of MPs don’t pass on all of their staffing allowance to staff.
We are also continuing to push MPs on the automatic uprating of salaries. Their staffing allowance goes up every year but many of them do not pass this increase on. We are also going to push MPs on the starting salaries of researchers and secretaries which at around £13,000 are far too low.
MP of the year so far goes to Linda Gilroy MP, who in the debate on the SSRB argued that if MPs get their pay automatically uprated, so should staff. We get another chance to lobby MPs on this when some of the recommendations go to the Members Estimates Committee.
The Queue Jumping campaign – making the argument that the rule that MPs can queue jump staff should be abolished.
I hope you all saw or heard about the petition Lembit Opik MP presented in the House.
To quote from Hansard: “The 380 signatories know that the staff keep this place running in the democratic interests of the country. I thank Unite, the union, for its tireless efforts on this campaign and hope that the Administration Committee will soon abandon the regime of common discourtesy and restore courtesy to the Commons. ” So he did us proud.
We will pursue this campaign in 2008 because there’s nothing more petty than an employer passing a rule that lets them jump a queue in front of their employee, in no other workplace in the country would this be tolerated.
The campaign for recognition
We have over 400 members but no rights when it comes to negotiating pay and conditions.
I am expecting that an EDM be put down for us soon asking that the situation be improved, and this where you come in: Please be ready to look out for a letter we’ll be sending to MPs about it, look out for the EDM, make sure we get over 100 signatures.
Please get involved – and thanks for working with me so far, as the new Chair,
Dan Whittle
Last updated: 18 June 2008