Members in Universal Credit continue to face difficulties when asserting their rights at work. The following circular updates members on points of agreement with DWP, and points that so far there has been disagreement on. Further negotiations are due Monday 27/02/17 and another circular will follow that.
Flexing on at 7.30am
Where there is work to do, staff can start at 7.30am when they have a fixed start time of 8am. As all staff across UC live are trained to clear tasks – including Telephony Agents, Account Developers and Case Managers – and there are backlogs numbering into the hundreds of thousands, there is plenty of work to do. This exact paragraph has been agreed with UC national managers.
Starting at 7.45am or 8am
Staff were notified on their Annex 2 forms of start times of 8am, not 7.45am. However, UC management are quoting the Collective Agreement out of context to insist that staff attend at 7.45am. PCS disagree with this approach and it is being debated with senior managers.
They are likely to amend Annex 2’s in the future to 7.45am, so it will only be an issue for the first six months. However, where members have agreed to start at 8am in the belief they will have 15 mins to prepare before going on telephones, and coming in at 7.45am is proving difficult for personal or caring reasons, reps should discuss with managers to see if resolution is possible.
If it is not possible, even following grievance and appeal, cases should be notified to the GEC via leeds@pcs.org.uk
Fixing a finish at 6.30pm
Calls made by claimants prior to 6pm go into a queue; members on telephony are needed to clear the calls in the queue and processors are needed in case of hand-offs. However, once the calls are done, the view of PCS is that both telephony staff and processors are free either to go, or to stay until 6.30pm. The cover up to 6.30pm is designed to deal with customer demand at this time.
UC senior managers have disputed this, believing that the ED flexibility to leave early, when you have fixed a shift, is for telephony staff only. This is being challenged by the GEC. It represents unfair treatment of Account Developers, who are working telephony when it suits DWP but then badged as processors when DWP want to keep them in work until 6.30pm.
Other job roles, which are not tied to the front-facing part of the business, are also being treated with unnecessary inflexibility and this too is being raised by the GEC with UC senior managers.
How do I know when calls are finished?
OCC have introduced a process to notify all site DMO inboxes once the last call in the queue is cleared. Site managers also have a global view which will tell them when calls are cleared and site-level processes can be put in place to notify telephony staff. As discussed above, management are currently treating non-telephony staff differently to telephony staff. GEC negotiators have made clear this is not acceptable and it is an urgent topic for discussion on 27/02/17.
Review of % requirement for tent-poles
PCS will continue to present our arguments to the employer that the percentages fixed at the end of the day are too high, and should be reduced. Across DWP Operations, the employer has committed to reviewing the evidence during live running, and before further discussions begin about the next six month set of working patterns are gathered and agreed.
Assumed Consent to Leave Early or Start Late
If you have a fixed start, once you have worked just over half a day, you have the assumed consent to flex off for the rest of the day, if you wish to.
Fixing a finish is the reverse – you can come to work late, so long as you work just over half a day up to and including the time you have agreed as your fixed finish time.
You can’t be asked to fix both a start and a finish.
When you use these flexibilities, you do not have to find cover. Cover is built into the Employee Deal, because the employer has already determined how many people are needed at the start of the day (who will definitely work the first half of the day) and the end of the day (who will definitely work the end half of the day).
The Employee Deal Collective Agreement states that there are exceptional occasions on which the “assumed consent to leave” may be over-ridden. This should be genuinely exceptional circumstances, out of the norm and discussed with the union in advance of any decision, reflecting that the Collective Agreement is just that, an agreement.
The flexi limits for members are that they accrue up to a maximum 4 days flexi credit or a maximum 3 day flexi deficit at the end of each 4 week accounting period. This section of this circular has been seen by UC senior management and has not been disputed.
What about Work Force Manager
From Monday 6th Feb, the times that members have agreed to fix, either at the start or the end of the day, are what matter. WFM is just a planning tool and one of its limitations is that it will only accept details with both a start and end time. No one should be told that they have to stick precisely to the hours entered on Work Force Manager.
Staff should not be pressured over “non-adherence” and other parts of DWP Operations have begun to issue instructions to managers to end the non-adherence obsession.
The DWP Flexible Working Hours Policy applies to everyone. Members are only committed to the start OR the finish time that they have fixed using the Team Planning Tool (TPT, or Cover Tool). All staff will have an Annex 2 form letting them know what they have fixed.
A common sense approach will be taken by managers when members need to take emergency leave and they will not be required to find cover. Applications for full or half day's flexi will continue to be done as now through your team leader. This section of this circular has been agreed by UC senior managers.
Breaks
UC have implemented the new breaks policy. Breaks are accrued by all staff, including part time staff, at a rate of 5 minutes per hour worked, up to a maximum of thirty minutes in a day. It allows for all staff to organise their breaks in a flexible way – e.g. 2 x 15 minutes, 3 x 10 minutes. Members do not have to adhere to the times in GWFM and we would expect members to work together in their teams to ensure that not everyone goes on a break at the same time. This should ensure that team leader involvement can be minimal. This already works very well across other telephony areas in Operations.
This paragraph has also been agreed by UC Senior Managers.
Other issues and further negotiations
A range of other issues have been raised with UC – the need for extra staffing, pressure at Grimsby, late opening at Derby, blanket reviews of Occupational Health reasonable adjustments for disabled staff, poor forecasting models for calls and others. These will be reported on following the next meeting with UC management on 27/02/17.
