Public and Commercial Services Union

This conference recognises that across central government there are thousands of unorganised workers in the facilities management (FM) sector. This includes cleaners, security guards, catering staff and others working, in the main, for private sector employers.

 

The work is often unpleasant and performed during anti social hours. Examples of bullying, harassment and racism by the employer are rife. Many of these workers receive appallingly low rates of pay and disgraceful treatment from their employer.

 

This conference believes that organising FM workers should be a priority for our union. We should demand fair pay and decent conditions for FM workers based around a living wage and fair treatment at work.

 

Conference notes that PCS membership density is low in this sector and believes that we should be at the forefront of organising these workers so that they can unite to collectively improve their working lives.

 

Conference also notes a number of important disputes and struggles which have broken out in other sectors recently, including the RMT campaign to organise cleaners on the London underground and the magnificent fight against the deportation of ISS employed cleaners, who dared to stand up for fair pay, at the School of African Studies (SOAS) in London.

 

Conference offers its full support to these campaigns and also commends the work that our own union has been engaged in to organise security guards in Mitie. This proves that our union can effectively organise in the FM Sector.   

 

Conference instructs the NEC to:

 

1.      Ensure that the PCS Commercial Sector publishes a report setting out how our union intends to organise these workers around the following demands:

 

·       An annual pay award in line with inflation

·       A career path and access to training for every worker

·       A decent pension

·       Additional pay for unsociable hours and bank holidays

·       A minimum of 20 days annual leave per year plus 8 bank holidays

·       Guaranteed sick pay

·       A 35 hour week without loss of pay

·       Clean and warm mess rooms with showers and changing rooms

·       Provision of uniform and safety wear

·       Full employment rights including the right to representation by PCS

·       To campaign for work to be brought back in house

·       An end to all forms of discrimination

 

2.      Convene discussions between the national union, the commercial sector and PCS to agree the most appropriate and effective manner in which to represent FM workers.

3.      To create a lay membership led facilities management sector in the commercial sector to co-ordinate bargaining, campaigning and organising across this sector.

4.      To build democratic structures across FM employers that empower members to effectively organise, win their own battles, recruit new members and develop new layers of activists

5.      To build links across the wider trade union movement and campaign groups to highlight the appalling treatment and terms and conditions faced by FM workers.  

6.      To publish a charter for workers in the catering, cleaning and security industries.

7.      To develop a bargaining agenda to protect workers from sub contracting to cut pay and to ensure that we bargain across the sector to prevent undercutting and the undermining of agreements we conclude to improve pay, terms and conditions.

8.      To ensure that appropriate resources are available to deliver this strategy in the FM Sector.

This conference notes the increased use of inshoring in the private sector.

 

Under this approach many employers' are using the Tier 2 visa system to fill skills gaps in companies within the UK. PCS members working for these employers believe that some of these 'skills gaps' are spurious to say the least. 

 

Our members working for IT companies have seen jobs in the UK cut and then filled under this system by workers being brought over to the UK predominantly from India on inferior terms and conditions. 

 

In recent months, the use of the Tier 2 visa has exploded with thousands of workers being brought into the UK at the same time as many of these employers have been making massive redundancies.

 

This conference believes that such a self regulated system of bringing workers into the UK is open to abuse by employers who will use it to seek to exploit workers, create false divisions and develop any opportunity to drive down wages and conditions.

 

This conference therefore instructs the NEC to:

 

1.      Carry out an investigation using whatever means necessary to establish the facts around the use of Tier 2 visa's on government contracts and if necessary to campaign for tighter regulation.

2.      Determine to what extent PCS members have been and continue to be impacted by this poorly regulated system in the IT sector in particular. This investigation should focus on the impact on pay in companies where inshoring has been used.

3.      Develop an approach to ensure PCS members continue to be protected in line with union policy.

4.      Put in place an approach to organise workers regardless of the nature of the contract and to bring together all workers around an agenda of improving pay and defending jobs.

This ADC notes with alarm the unprecedented step the British Council has taken in directly off-shoring Government IT jobs.

 

PCS members in the private sector have resisted the threat of off-shoring for several years now, but report an increasingly bullish attitude to off-shoring from government departments, and note that there is an unchallenged assumption that off-shoring would save the public purse, when in reality the situation is much more complicated.

 

This ADC re-confirms PCS principled opposition to off-shoring of government work whether in the public or private sector and calls on PCS to launch an active campaign opposing off-shoring, including commissioning a report on the economic and environmental viability of off-shoring covering areas as:

 

·       the cost of the UK workforce required to do ‘back office’ supervision

·       the cost of the re-structuring the UK workforce to enable suitable work to be off-shored

·       how skills transfer can take place between the off-shored developers and on-shore training, maintenance and support teams

·       foreign travel and expenses of senior managers

·       staff turnover in the offshore workforce, and vetting procedures for direct hires

·       the loss of skilled jobs from the UK workforce

·       the loss of departmental control when secondary sub-contractors offshore

Conference notes that those members formerly in DWP privatised into Haden, now BBW, have had no pay progression for three years.

 

Conference instructs the NEC to oversee the opening of negotiations with BBW aimed at achieving the following.

 

·       An Agreed grading structure, with open promotion boarding used as the means by which members can be promoted through the grades.

 

·       A single rate of pay for each grade (preferably), which should be the highest such rate currently in payment plus a pay rise element for current year, or failing that, guaranteed pay progression arrangements such that members will reach their max in no longer than the time set by PCS National policy.

 

·       Annual pay rises for all members, separate and distinct from point 2 above, and payable on a different date.

 

Conference calls on the NEC to keep the members concerned, and their Branches, informed regarding progress towards the above aims.

 

Conference so directs the NEC.

 

This Annual Delegate Conference recognises that existing PCS policy is to firmly oppose all outsourcing of work. To build on existing policy, this ADC instructs the NEC to demand that the Government makes all companies currently outsourcing work to adhere to their businesses Terms and Conditions and UK National minimum wage no matter which country they have outsourced to. This will improve current working conditions and pay for those workers already employed and will discourage outsourcing in the future. Negotiations with Government to have begun by the next time this ADC meets in 2011.

Conference recognises that employers have a statutory duty to disclose in writing to the appropriate employee representatives the following information concerning proposals for redundancies so that they can play a constructive part in the consultation process:

 

·       the reasons for the proposals

·       the numbers and descriptions of employees it is proposed to dismiss as redundant

·       the total number of employees of any such description employed at the establishment in question

·       the way in which employees will be selected for redundancy

·       how the dismissals are to be carried out, taking account of any agreed procedure, including the period over which the dismissals are to take effect

·       the method of calculating the amount of redundancy payments to be made to those who are dismissed.

 

The information may be handed to local employee representatives or may be sent by post to an address notified to the employer or, in the case of a trade union, to the address of the union’s head or main office.

 

Conference notes the practice of certain employers of insisting that such information, when supplied, is to be regarded as confidential to the employee representatives.

 

Conference is concerned that such a practice renders it difficult if not impossible for the union’s representatives to properly ascertain members’ views and protect their interests. The practice can also create the impression that representatives wish to keep secret information provided by management. This impression can lead to members believing that their representatives are not looking after the members’ best interests.

 

Conference instructs all of the union’s bargaining units to repudiate employer practice of labelling as confidential, information supplied in connection with redundancy proposals. Conference further instructs all of the unions' bargaining units to inform employers consulting on redundancies that when information is given in confidence, the union will not regard this as consultation and will not respond to the information until the employer removes all restrictions on the use of the information.