w4mp | representation | unite: t&g section

The branch has a new website: http://unitepsbranch.org/
Parts of the new website are still under construction so the material held below on this page,
and on those linked from it, will remain for the time being.

As I write the Department of Resources are preparing a mailout to MPs introducing changes to the standard contract for new staff. The new ‘flexible’ contract increases the maximum hours new staff can be contracted to work, and the maximum notice and trial periods. There is a small sweetener: annual leave can be increased from 20 to 25 days.

This is an identical contract change to the one the branch thought we had defeated in May (they withdrew it after we piled pressure on the Chairman of the APMA with a postcard campaign, and briefed the Deputy Leader of the House who raised this on our behalf at the APMA).

Now the Deputy Leader and the Chairman of the APMA have changed and the Department of Resources is seeking to introduce the changes again.

In May we opposed the new flexible contract (apart from the increase in maximum annual leave / notice period) for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most damaging is the tension that will be caused because it will mean some new employees will have longer contractual hours than existing staff.

Because there is no corresponding change to the payscales some employees will be doing longer hours for the same pay. A person doing the same job as another employee should expect to get the same pay per hour.

I have asked the new Chairman of the APMA (Don Touhig MP) for a meeting. Members can decide what policy the branch has on the contract and further action to take at the branch meeting (if we haven’t managed to stop the contract by then).

The branch’s campaign for voluntary recognition from the Department of Resources ended when our application was turned down by the House of Commons Commission.

At the branch AGM we decided to call in ACAS to help resolve our dispute. Next week (beginning the 12th) ACAS will attempt to organise a meeting between ourselves and Andrew Walker, Director General of Resources.

My guess is that Mr Walker will try to derail the meeting by arguing that the House is not our joint employer (when we know in practice the House has control over pay scales, pension, holiday entitlement, notice, grievance procedures, hours, and contract terms generally)

At this point it will be for the branch to decide whether to apply for statutory recognition to the CAC.

Those people with long memories will remember the Branch’s campaign against the rule that MPs are allowed priority access to facilities in the House of Commons. The Administration Committee kicked the decision into touch, and following it’s one year review (which ends this month) the branch is writing to the Committee to ask that the rule be rescinded. Updates will be available on the End the Queue Jumping Rule Facebook group.

This month the branch welcomed the inauguration of a number of new branch officers, widening the bargaining agenda to amongst other areas the Environment, Equalities and Professional Development (learning). Please see our w4mp page for details.

We have members on a new ICT committee so if you have any issues with your IT equipment that are not being solved by PICT you can now raise them through one of your UNITE reps.

The branch takes its bid for recognition to the three Party conferences in the coming weeks. It’s so that the maximum number of staff can talk directly to branch officers and take part in the consultation on the enclosed recognition document.

Over 120 MPs have now signed a cross-party Early Day Motion (1057) which calls on the House authorities to look at ways in which our union branch could gain consultation rights so that it could have a say on matters such as terms and conditions.

We believe that the House should operate the very best employment practices, and this should include putting on a formal basis the consultation it conducts with our Unite branch which has over 400 members, including members from the three largest political parties.

Changes to policies and procedures which do not constitute changes to terms and conditions of employment, occupational pensions issues, health and safety, staff welfare, and on other matters which lead to changes that do not require negotiation.

You can meet with branch officers at a reception at Labour Party Conference from 4-7pm 22^nd September in the Old Nags Head, on Jackson’s Row. Meetings at Liberal Democrat and Conservative conferences can be arranged by appointment by contacting me.

If you’re speaking on the platform at conference, remember to say you’re a member of the Unite Parliamentary Staff Branch – it’ll make sure you get a guaranteed round of applause from those of us who are there.

Kevin and I wrote jointly with Mohammad Sarwar MP to the Chair of the Panel on Members Allowances.

We enclosed copies of two Parliamentary Questions and their answers, which show the vast disparity in the level of redundancy payments available to staff of the House and those available to members to pay their staff.

We wrote jointly because this is an issue of concern both to MPs and their staff.

MPs staff can only receiving a maximum redundancy payment of twice their statutory redundancy payment. They receive the statutory part from central funds and MPs can make up the rest from the winding-up allowance.

There will be redundancies in the coming election and I believe there needs to be a review, as there was before 1997. Since 1997 the terms and conditions of staff have improved, but the redundancy arrangements have fallen behind.

John Spellar is rewriting the Green Book and it is time to give MPs the freedom to pay increased redundancy payments to their staff.

The Unite Interns’ Network is going strong, which is important for the future of the branch. Following the success of the first get-together, our Interns Network will be meeting monthly. Secretary of State for Health Alan Johnson MP attended the launch, saying “I want to lend my name to this excellent Unite initiative, as people involved in politics interns are such a valuable resource. Unite is bringing a sense of order to the interns’ system.”

Stacey Vickers has her first mentors in place. One of our members, Tulip Siddiq, has been blogging about being a mentor www.tulipsiddiq.com.

If the Interns Network continues to flourish, and interns start to contribute to branch activity, it will go some way to proving that unions should be reaching out to hitherto uncovered groups, non-standard workers such as interns.

If you have a new intern in the office, give them Adam Leeder’s email address: leedera@parliament.uk so they can join up.

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.

Over 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.

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 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.

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.

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


	It's 04 February 2012
home personnel representation unite	Search the site
UNITE Parliamentary Staff Branch Messages from the Branch Chair The branch has a new website: http://unitepsbranch.org/ Parts of the new website are still under construction so the material held below on this page, and on those linked from it, will remain for the time being. To go to the main page click here. Added: 6 August 2010 Message from the Chair - Max Freedman Our branch continues to play an active role in preserving staff conditions in Parliament under the new IPSA regime, as well as pushing for the modern, professional employment standards that we should expect and demand in our Parliament. We have now signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the House of Commons authorities that should lead to us being better and regularly consulted on changes at Parliament that affect staff - including IT, catering, environment and health & safety. This is a tremendous step forward after years of calling for this, and I would like to thank Dan Whittle and Kevin Flack for getting this finally on the table as well as Louise Haigh for the work that she has put in to get this realised. As staff pay and rations have now gone over to IPSA, we are doing our best to establish a similarly constructive relationship with them. So far we have not had the regular meetings that we had hoped for, but we are pressing for these to begin as soon as possible. We will of course continue to raise the severe concerns about the level of staffing budgets, with the impact that this has had on redundancy packages, the elimination of bonuses, and other areas where our conditions have been downgraded. The twin pressures of the economy and the expenses scandals must not be the pretext for slashing the pay staff - who have been blameless for both. Of course there are other issues that we are raising, including maternity pay, opposing the publication of staff salaries and the decision to stop making trade union subscription payments from payroll. If any member of staff has concerns about IPSA policy impacting terms and conditions we will of course be interested to hear about it. Our strength comes from our numbers, and we are proud that we represent so many staff from every party in the House. We welcome all new members and will continue to speak loudly on all members' behalf. Best wishes, Max Freedman Chair Added: 8 January 2009 UNITE staff branch Chair’s Column Happy New Year to our 415 members. New Standard Contract As I write the Department of Resources are preparing a mailout to MPs introducing changes to the standard contract for new staff. The new ‘flexible’ contract increases the maximum hours new staff can be contracted to work, and the maximum notice and trial periods. There is a small sweetener: annual leave can be increased from 20 to 25 days. This is an identical contract change to the one the branch thought we had defeated in May (they withdrew it after we piled pressure on the Chairman of the APMA with a postcard campaign, and briefed the Deputy Leader of the House who raised this on our behalf at the APMA). Now the Deputy Leader and the Chairman of the APMA have changed and the Department of Resources is seeking to introduce the changes again. In May we opposed the new flexible contract (apart from the increase in maximum annual leave / notice period) for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most damaging is the tension that will be caused because it will mean some new employees will have longer contractual hours than existing staff. Because there is no corresponding change to the payscales some employees will be doing longer hours for the same pay. A person doing the same job as another employee should expect to get the same pay per hour. I have asked the new Chairman of the APMA (Don Touhig MP) for a meeting. Members can decide what policy the branch has on the contract and further action to take at the branch meeting (if we haven’t managed to stop the contract by then). Recognition Campaign The branch’s campaign for voluntary recognition from the Department of Resources ended when our application was turned down by the House of Commons Commission. At the branch AGM we decided to call in ACAS to help resolve our dispute. Next week (beginning the 12th) ACAS will attempt to organise a meeting between ourselves and Andrew Walker, Director General of Resources. My guess is that Mr Walker will try to derail the meeting by arguing that the House is not our joint employer (when we know in practice the House has control over pay scales, pension, holiday entitlement, notice, grievance procedures, hours, and contract terms generally) At this point it will be for the branch to decide whether to apply for statutory recognition to the CAC. Queue Jumping Rule Those people with long memories will remember the Branch’s campaign against the rule that MPs are allowed priority access to facilities in the House of Commons. The Administration Committee kicked the decision into touch, and following it’s one year review (which ends this month) the branch is writing to the Committee to ask that the rule be rescinded. Updates will be available on the End the Queue Jumping Rule Facebook group. New Officers This month the branch welcomed the inauguration of a number of new branch officers, widening the bargaining agenda to amongst other areas the Environment, Equalities and Professional Development (learning). Please see our w4mp page for details. We have members on a new ICT committee so if you have any issues with your IT equipment that are not being solved by PICT you can now raise them through one of your UNITE reps. Cheers Dan Whittle Chair Added 15 September 2008 Chair’s Column - Dan Whittle reports: Recognition The branch takes its bid for recognition to the three Party conferences in the coming weeks. It’s so that the maximum number of staff can talk directly to branch officers and take part in the consultation on the enclosed recognition document. Over 120 MPs have now signed a cross-party Early Day Motion (1057) which calls on the House authorities to look at ways in which our union branch could gain consultation rights so that it could have a say on matters such as terms and conditions. We believe that the House should operate the very best employment practices, and this should include putting on a formal basis the consultation it conducts with our Unite branch which has over 400 members, including members from the three largest political parties. The recognition agreement would allow the branch: Use of notice boards, use of internal mail services. Use of the telephone and the E Mail service and photocopying and occasional recruitment desks by agreement. Union branch meetings held on Parliamentary premises by agreement. Members to opt to deduct subscriptions through their payroll Consultation with the Department for Finance and Admin on the following issues:- Changes to policies and procedures which do not constitute changes to terms and conditions of employment, occupational pensions issues, health and safety, staff welfare, and on other matters which lead to changes that do not require negotiation. Negotiation with the Department for Finance and Admin on all issues that propose changes to the terms and conditions of staff in its standard contract of employment , including:-Hours of work, sick pay, salary scales, paid maternity and paternity leave, annual leave and special leave, notice periods, grievance and disciplinary procedures and fixed term contracts. You can meet with branch officers at a reception at Labour Party Conference from 4-7pm 22^nd September in the Old Nags Head, on Jackson’s Row. Meetings at Liberal Democrat and Conservative conferences can be arranged by appointment by contacting me. If you’re speaking on the platform at conference, remember to say you’re a member of the Unite Parliamentary Staff Branch – it’ll make sure you get a guaranteed round of applause from those of us who are there. Redundancy Kevin and I wrote jointly with Mohammad Sarwar MP to the Chair of the Panel on Members Allowances. We enclosed copies of two Parliamentary Questions and their answers, which show the vast disparity in the level of redundancy payments available to staff of the House and those available to members to pay their staff. We wrote jointly because this is an issue of concern both to MPs and their staff. MPs staff can only receiving a maximum redundancy payment of twice their statutory redundancy payment. They receive the statutory part from central funds and MPs can make up the rest from the winding-up allowance. There will be redundancies in the coming election and I believe there needs to be a review, as there was before 1997. Since 1997 the terms and conditions of staff have improved, but the redundancy arrangements have fallen behind. John Spellar is rewriting the Green Book and it is time to give MPs the freedom to pay increased redundancy payments to their staff. Interns’ Network The Unite Interns’ Network is going strong, which is important for the future of the branch. Following the success of the first get-together, our Interns Network will be meeting monthly. Secretary of State for Health Alan Johnson MP attended the launch, saying “I want to lend my name to this excellent Unite initiative, as people involved in politics interns are such a valuable resource. Unite is bringing a sense of order to the interns’ system.” Stacey Vickers has her first mentors in place. One of our members, Tulip Siddiq, has been blogging about being a mentor www.tulipsiddiq.com. If the Interns Network continues to flourish, and interns start to contribute to branch activity, it will go some way to proving that unions should be reaching out to hitherto uncovered groups, non-standard workers such as interns. If you have a new intern in the office, give them Adam Leeder’s email address: leedera@parliament.uk so they can join up. Added 20 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. Over 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 Added 11 February 2008 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: 24 February 2011

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