The following details have been supplied by PCS DWP Group:

Members’ Bulletin 006/17 (attached on this website and cascaded to all members) gave a clear position on many of the issues our members are facing.

This bulletin for branches reports on some progress and some guidance for reps, as they continue to challenge bad practices.

7.30am starts

Multiple sites have reported difficulties with the 7.30am starts for those fixing a shift to start at 8am. The Employee Deal guarantees that staff can start at 7.45am, and at 7.30am “where there is work to do” and have fixed their start time at 8am.  Different messages include “there’s not enough team leaders in”, “health and safety won’t allow it” and managers arguing that there isn’t the work to do.

Managers should provide specific information about teams where they believe there isn’t work to do. This should not be a blanket approach as there are backlogs of work. Where managers do believe that there isn’t work to do, this should be obvious to all concerned and the clear rationale discussed with local reps. For example teams where members have not been trained to do any other work besides telephony. This should decrease over time as all members are trained up.

There should be no health and safety concerns that prevent a site opening from 7.30am. Opening from this earlier time has been standard practice for years without risk. So there should be no reason why this should suddenly become unsafe under Employee Deal.

Taking matters to the next stage

The Employee Deal Collective Agreement has been successfully used to open up genuine flexible working to huge numbers of staff who have not had this before. We have a raft of examples where local reps have successfully challenged poor implementation such as a member who was threatened with the Standards of Behaviour for using their assumed consent to leave. The member subsequently got an apology.

PCS has had positive discussions about the proper implementation of Employee Deal at directorate level who also agreed that the content of MB/06/17 (still attached on this website and cascaded to all members)  accurately reflected those discussions. Senior management recognise that an overly rigid approach will cause problems.  

Any attempts to infringe the collective agreement should be raised with the Branch office immediately.  Any issues that cannot be resolved locally will be urgently escalated back to Senior Pensions Management via PCS DWP Group.