COMMUNICATION WORKERS UNION

Romec Dispute: Attendance & Modernisation Agreement

Following 9 days of intensive talks, CWU and Romec negotiators reached agreement late last Friday afternoon. The PEC is recommending the attached draft agreement (available on request) to Romec engineers in an individual member ballot, which will commence after a series of regionally based briefings to members, which are in the process of being arranged.

I would like to thank branches for the support shown to Romec engineers during the dispute.

The draft agreement covers the issue of a wider attendance span and the process of negotiating and populating duties. It introduces unsocial hours payments and restores overtime multipliers. It also covers the long standing unresolved issue of travel time arrangements for itinerant engineers.

Introduction

Branches will recall the background to this dispute. As part of the 2007 pay agreement the union and Romec committed to negotiate changes to attendance arrangements to enable a 06.00 to 22.00 hour span and also agreed to negotiate a national travel time agreement. Romec then drew up and attempted to implement changes to the attendance span without negotiation with the union and after the union called strike action in response serviced notice on individual employees of these changes. In response Romec engineers took 3 days strike action, followed by a further 1 day strike and ban on callout. The union’s position remained consistent throughout: change must be negotiated, must provide appropriate safeguards for employees and unsocial hours working must attract an appropriate level of payment.

The attached agreement achieves all of the union’s key objectives. Virtually since the establishment of Romec in 1989 the company has sought to deal with attendance on a company to individual basis rather than by agreement with CWU. The strength and unity shown by CWU members during this dispute has enabled the union to put itself back in the process of determining attendance arrangements at local level. Attendances will once again be the subject of collective local agreement, both as part of the deployment of the changes contained with the agreement and on an ongoing basis.

The agreement provides appropriate safeguards for members facing change but also gives us the opportunity to implement changes that members will find beneficial, in the form of attendances over less than 5 days. It achieves in full the union’s claim in respect of restoration of overtime multipliers and the unsocial hours payments provide the opportunity for members to enhance pensionable earnings.

2008 Romec Attendance & Modernisation Agreement

The first page of the agreement deals with its scope and the remaining issues outstanding from the 2007 Romec pay agreement. The agreement applies to all engineers in Romec apart from those in MSD. It commits Romec and CWU to deal with standby/callout provisions and payments by the end of the calendar year; and grading issues relating to specialist skills and the admin grade review by 31st March 2009. It confirms that the engineering over margin bonus scheme will continue to operate for 2008 and commits both parties to a review of the scheme to conclude in time for the 2009 bonus round.

Populating Jobs

This section of the agreement deals with the process of negotiating and populating duties. The key principles are designed to balance the requirements of Romec and its customers with employee aspirations and individual circumstances. The third bullet point makes it clear that the mutual objective should be to populate jobs on a voluntary basis.

The process provides for negotiation between Regional representatives and General Managers to produce agreed duty sets. Romec have drawn back from seeking the implementation of 22.00 finishes as part of the initial process, although the agreement puts in place appropriate unsocial hours payments if this becomes a requirement in the future.

The agreement makes it explicitly clear that wider attendance spans should enable creative use of the options Annex 1 which include 9 day fortnights, 4 day weeks and 3 day weeks. The agreement is explicit that “proposals for less than 5 day attendances will be agreed where compatible with customer and efficiency requirements”. The agreement seeks to protect engineers currently working a 9 day fortnight by giving them the first option of any such attendances going forward and provides for the immediate assimilation of 9 day fortnight engineers to the engineering grading structure at the conclusion of the agreement. Any 9 day fortnight engineer who is required to relinquish this pattern of attendance will have a notice period of 6 months before the change becomes effective.

Following agreement employees will be invited to select a job for which they have the requisite skills – if there is a shortfall between the jobs selected and the required coverage the General Manager and the Regional rep will meet again to consider means of bridging the gap to ensure a best fit between business requirement and the options people have volunteered for. The agreement reintroduces the principle of seniority in determining who gets a job where there is an excess of volunteers with appropriate skills.

In the event that individuals are selected for duties for which they have not volunteered (again using seniority) they would have a right of appeal based on personal circumstances. If this appeal is unsuccessful, there is a second level of appeal direct to the Human Resources Director, where this is supported by CWU head office.

The document makes clear that future changes to attendance patterns will be the subject of negotiation and agreement at the appropriate level and in respect of any contracts which Romec is bidding for which will require defined patterns of attendance outwith those in the agreement, this will be the subject of a negotiation with CWU at head office agreement.

The agreement leaves existing shift working arrangements unchanged.

It allows for swaps and rotations and is absolutely explicit that “in no circumstances will a current employee be compelled to work a fixed late attendance”.

Unsocial attendance and overtime payments

As a result of a number of pay agreements over the last 8 years cash rates currently apply for overtime and these have declined expressed as a proportion of basic rate. The agreement restores the old Romec overtime multipliers with effect from 1st April 2009 on the basis of weekday at 1.4, Saturday at 1.5, Sunday at double time and bank holiday at 2.5.

It introduces unsocial hours payments on the basis of a £10 per attendance allowance for attendances ending between 18.00 and 20.00 with payment during these hours at x 1.2 rate. For future attendances scheduled between 20.00 and 22.00 a further £5 attendance allowance would be payable and these hours will be paid at a rate of x 1.25. The rate for attendance within conditioned hours on Saturday would be 1.25. There is also a scheduled Sunday rate of 1.7 although at present there is no provision for Sunday attendance within conditioned hours in this agreement.

NDA, weekend and bank holiday scheduled hours premia will be pensionable with immediate effect. Weekday premia will become pensionable with effect from 1st April 2010 and the pensionability of the attendance allowances will be reviewed at that date.

For the most numerous grade of Technician 2 (with a current hourly rate of £12.48) an 18.30 finish would therefore attract an additional payment of £11.25 (£56.25 if worked over a 5 day week).

A 20.00 finish would attract an additional payment of £15 (£75 per week over a 5 day attendance).

A future 20.30 finish would attract a payment of £21.56 (£107.80 over 5 days).

A future 22.00 finish would attract a payment of £26.24 (£162.40 over 5 days).

Itinerant Engineers – Travel to work agreement

This has been a long standing thorny issue which CWU and Romec have been unable to resolve despite a number of attempts stretching back over 15 years. Essentially the problem has been that Romec engineers work a wide variety of different travel time arrangements – some of which are enshrined in agreements and some of which have simply grown up over the years.

The provisions of the draft agreement are better than any of the previous attempts to find a negotiated settlement on this issue and have the merit of being very simple.

Itinerant engineers would be obliged to travel up to 30 minutes in their own time from home to first job and up to 30 minutes in their own time from last job to home. The 30 minutes in the morning would include the obligatory vehicle check. This travelling time would be unpaid. Unpaid travelling time is not cumulative, so, for example, if the journey time in the morning is 15 minutes but in the evening it is 45 minutes only 30 minutes of the evening journey is unpaid.

Any travel time above 30 minutes would be paid at overtime rate. Travelling time to and from work will not exceed 90 minutes per day in total except with the agreement of the individual. If travel time is expected to exceed 90 minutes the individual will decide whether the extra travel will take place on overtime or within normal working hours.

Conclusion

A series of regionally based briefings to members are in the process of being arranged after which an individual member ballot on the draft agreement will take place.

Source: LTB803/08