— Gary Smith (@GMBGarySmith) May 10, 2022
]]>As the economic storm clouds gather, some good news for our members, their families and local communities who depend on quality jobs in the defence manufacturing sector.https://t.co/YV9U5rkPO6
— Gary Smith (@GMBGarySmith) May 10, 2022
]]>our Christmas Raffle will be Drawn in December on15th for £100 so good luck everyone.
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our Christmas Raffle will be Drawn in December on15th for £100 so good luck everyone.
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The trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States could maintain create and secure jobs at Rolls Royce in Derby, BAE Systems in Barrow, Babcock sites, and throughout the wider supply chain, the union says.
In the letter, GMB General Secretary Gary Smith calls on the Government…
]]>The trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States could maintain create and secure jobs at Rolls Royce in Derby, BAE Systems in Barrow, Babcock sites, and throughout the wider supply chain, the union says.
In the letter, GMB General Secretary Gary Smith calls on the Government to secure work for the UK under the AUKUS agreement – including through the use of defence and national security procurement exemptions.
Gary Smith, GMB General Secretary, said:
“As Australia’s requirements are assessed during the next 18 months, I call on you to secure work for the UK, including through use of the defence procurement national security exemptions if required.
“It is regrettable that the public debate on AUKUS has – in part – been based on misinformation.
“As a shipbuilding union, GMB spoken out against alarmist claims, and we are clear about the potential industrial benefits. But those benefits must now be realised.
“Over recent years, our members have suffered redundancies and yard closures and they have watched as the Government has sent orders worth hundreds of millions overseas.
“The current uncertainty over the domestic share in the construction of the £1.6 billion Fleet Solid Support vessels is a further illustration of how much more the Government must do to back our industry and its supply chain.
“You have said that you want to make the UK a ‘shipbuilding superpower’ and that AUKUS could create ‘hundreds of highly skilled jobs across the United Kingdom – including in Scotland, the North of England and the Midlands.’
“Both the AUKUS agreement and our domestic shipbuilding contracts must be utilised to the full if those ambitions are to have any currency at the next election.
“I urge you to act to safeguard the future of the defence shipbuilding industry upon which our own national security depends.”
]]>We wish them every success in their new roles and look forward to working with them in…
]]>We wish them every success in their new roles and look forward to working with them in the future.
]]>Our next raffle will take place on August the 1st
]]>Our next raffle will take place on August the 1st
]]>Fighting for UK Jobs (Again)
20th May 2020
1 Response to Company Announcement
The Company promised to provide details around the restructuring by the end of this month.
They have failed.
What was announced earlier today was insulting: high-level figures ‘to be confirmed’ with no indication of where or when these may…
]]>Fighting for UK Jobs (Again)
20th May 2020
1 Response to Company Announcement
The Company promised to provide details around the restructuring by the end of this month.
They have failed.
What was announced earlier today was insulting: high-level figures ‘to be confirmed’ with no indication of where or when these may happen.
We have previously communicated we will be honest and share with you all the information we are provided. The following figures were shared with the National Negotiating Trade Union Group on the 19th May 2020.
2020 2021 2020
Area Global UK
Directs 3000 1200 2150
Indirect 900 400 425
Engineering 1100 900 800
Total 5000 2500-3000 3375
We specifically and repeatedly asked for clarity around the numbers for 2020 and 2021, plus site impacts including potential closures. To date we have not received any clarity whatsoever.
Yet again British facilities will bear the brunt of this restructuring. We are constantly told we are a Global business when it comes to investment and offshoring, yet when times are difficult it’s always the British workforce that suffers disproportionately. This is a scandal given how many millions of UK taxpayer pounds have been granted to the Company over the years.
Not content with cutting an imprecise number of jobs in areas ‘to be determined’, they have also told us they are ‘serving notice’ on all existing Union agreements on redundancy and restructuring. These binding agreements have been negotiated over many years and provide clarity, protection to employees and prevent disruption to the Company and its customers. They cover fundamentally important aspects including the terms of redundancy pay, the timescales involved, and the selection criteria to be used.
They also want to impose changes to “a raft of reward/benefit arrangements including our contractual and collective agreements” and “commence consultation on a strategic review of the Defined Benefit pension scheme”!
We recognise the global effect upon our industry and acknowledge there are going to be job reductions, but attacking long-standing agreements and terms and conditions is disgraceful opportunism, unrelated to a downturn in workload.
Although the job reductions are predominantly going to be in Civil Aero, these attacks will mean every single part of our Company is affected – including Defence Aero and Nuclear.
The Trade Union made it clear that we are here to negotiate with them, not just be provided information so they can tick the ‘consultation’ box. If they continue with this approach, we will have no alternative but to plan strategic disruption across the business.
2 COVID 19 H&S
Remembering that most of our facilities were dangerous and were only temporarily shut down due to TU insistence, it is now our strong belief the Company wanted to keep all facilities open in order to clear any work in progress, rather than protect the safety of their employees our members.
The latest Company Health & Safety policy on COVID has not been agreed by the National Negotiating Group. They seem to think it is now acceptable for some areas to disregard the 2-metre/15-minute distancing rule. This is totally unacceptable.
We will shortly circulate our own H&S guidance which members will be instructed to follow.
3 Lobby Activity
The RR National Trade Union group have been coordinating lobbying activities with the National Unions for the whole of the Aviation industry. In the next few weeks this will become more Rolls Royce focused at a regional level.
4 Bonuses & Shares
We are still awaiting details of the bonuses paid to Senior Management in March. By law they have until 30th June 2020 to declare this information. We expect these figures to shed light on why they declined to stop the payments when asked by the Trade Union.
5 Furlough
The government furlough scheme was set up to prevent companies from laying off workers. We still can’t understand why the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) has not been maximised throughout the Company. This would buy the Company and the Trade Union more time to deal with challenges we face in our industry
It is disappointing but not a surprise that the agreed set of principles on the application of furlough, including rotation, have been ignored in some areas where management seem to think they can dictate what happens, when and to whom without any consultation.
We are still in protracted negotiations concerning the criteria for shift changes and its associated impact on pay, if we reach agreement we will communicate accordingly. Until we have reached agreement and communicated with you, there should be no change to your shift arrangements and pay.
The Trade union will seek further discussions on an extension to phase 2 of the furlough arrangements.
6 Next steps
We do not wish to be on a collision course with the Company at this difficult time, we will remain pragmatic and professional, but if their actions are disproportionate and unreasonable we will do whatever it takes to fight for our members interests.
Again, we are committed to providing you with regular, factual, updates of our discussions and will provide further detail on each of the subject headings above in future bitesize communications.
All our communications can be seen using the following Link
Thank you for your continued support.
Steve Hibbert Ian Wilson
Tam Mitchell Mark Porter
Ian Bestwick Steve Jones
Mahf Khan Stuart Hedley
Ian Hodgkison Ian Clarke
1 Introduction & Background
We are writing to you to provide information on recent Trade Union (TU) activities regarding the COVID-19 crisis and the company’s responses.
In February, we approached the company when we predicted the COVID-19 situation was going to have an impact on our…
]]>Fighting for UK Jobs (Again)
4th May 2020
1 Introduction & Background
We are writing to you to provide information on recent Trade Union (TU) activities regarding the COVID-19 crisis and the company’s responses.
In February, we approached the company when we predicted the COVID-19 situation was going to have an impact on our people and our sites. Despite repeated pressure from us, formal meetings didn’t start until 23rd March.
The TU responded quickly by setting up a national TU team, representing the 5 major TU structures – Derby & Hucknall Works, the Manual Workers Combine, Staff National Bargaining Group, the Nuclear Groups and Controls. This approach was agreed by every convenor/senior rep from all represented groups in the UK. We reacted fast – it is a shame the company didn’t and lost valuable time.
The first difficult discussion we had was over the arrangements for the 10% pay deferral. We wanted to ensure that we were ‘all in this together’, so we asked that the payment of the All Employee Bonus Scheme (AEBS) was stopped immediately. We calculated that this could save the company around £100m. The company refused.
We also requested a statement from the company committing that no bonuses were to be paid for 2020 – including the RR board of directors which totalled more than £3.4m in 2018. The company refused.
2 Health & Safety
We demanded the company set up several key workstreams – populated with the right people making the right decisions in their area of expertise. The most important workstream is Health & Safety.
You should note that it was the TU that pressed for facilities to be temporarily shut down as we strongly believed some sites and operations were potentially dangerous regarding the COVID-19 outbreak. This was something the company was extremely reluctant to do – all they seemed to be concentrating on was encouraging people to work from home where possible. The company had no alternative but to agree, as we threatened to expose any dangerous practices.
Our priority is your wellbeing, but for some in our company the priority is attendance, production and profit.
The Health & Safety workstream was fundamental in making sure any facilities that had been shut down were as safe as possible before they could reopen. We also ensured that there is an audit checklist which must be satisfied for a facility to remain open.
Without Union involvement, you could still be working in an unsafe workplace.
3 Furlough
You will be aware that the government is currently helping businesses by offering ‘furlough’. Through our negotiations, we agreed a deal for Phase 1 of Furlough covering the first 3 weeks where employees would get 100% of their pay. The terms for Phase 2 Furlough have just been agreed and communicated.
We have not only secured more favourable financial terms than the government minimum, but also agreed fair selection criteria, along with exceptions for people who are in a vulnerable group themselves or look after someone who is vulnerable or ill.
Inconceivably, the company are still not making maximum use of furlough. Currently only around 22% of colleagues are on, or about to commence, furlough. Strangely only around 9% of managers are furloughed. They must be more important than us.
4 Reduced Hours working
We have agreed that one option the company can use where appropriate is to reduce working hours by 20%, with a reduction in pay of 10% plus the 10% pay deferral. For legal reasons, this may require a ballot of members in the affected area and more will be communicated on this if it applies where you work.
5 What Happens Next
On Monday 27th April, the national TU team met with Warren East, Harry Holt, Stephen Daintith, Chris Cholerton and other seniors from management and HR. They told us that the company was “moving from short-term measures to deal with COVID-19 to a more strategic review of our structure”. This would include “around 8000 redundancies globally” and “a reduction in footprint”.
We were told that the discussion was “absolutely confidential” due to share-price sensitivity. Senior TU reps are used to being trusted with confidential information and we always uphold this integrity. At that point we agreed the next step would be to meet further and receive more details about the proposal.
It’s therefore extremely disappointing that the company’s Chief Financial Officer could not keep that information confidential, as demonstrated by his response on Yammer:
“Our Civil business will probably be about a third smaller in 2021 and 2022 than we we’re anticipating. There is no doubt that we will have to resize the whole group. There will be headcount reductions.” – Stephen Daintith, 30th April 2020
Equally disappointing is that someone in the company clearly talked to the press on Friday 1st May. We are trying to establish if this was by design or in error. Some of those media reports incorrectly stated the TU had been consulted. We can categorically confirm that we have not been consulted nor do we know of any further details of the company’s plans other than those stated above.
Over the weekend we have informed the company that they need to provide all the details this week – not by the end of the month as stated in Warren’s last communication. Furthermore, these details need to be provided to all employees, not just the national TU team.
Until this is done, we will not be entering in to consultations or negotiations with the Company regarding headcount or resizing. However, we will continue with the TU proposed workstreams on the following topics:
• Temporary Labour – contractor numbers have reduced from 2,840 in mid-2018 to around 200 by the end of this month. Exceptions to this can only be agreed by your local TU representatives. This has only happened because of TU pressure.
• Managed Services – in 2019 the company spent more than £140m on managed services and were due a similar amount this year. Again, through TU pressure, £65m worth of spend has been stopped, with much of it brought back into RR. We believe this equates to around 1,000 full-time jobs and there is more to be done.
• Programmes and Projects – reviewing overall resourcing and investment plans including the balance and volume of work into the UK.
• Insourcing – to review what work needs to stop, pause or can be brought back in-house from our supplier network including current ‘make’ and ‘repair’ activities.
For several years we have had a very active political lobbying group made up of senior TU representatives supported by their full-time officers. This activity has delivered several successful campaigns on behalf of our membership.
We will continue to lobby Government through these difficult times, both for ourselves and our industry. We will push for a strategy that meets the increasing demands of climate change and electrification. An obvious example of this already in place is the Rolls-Royce led development of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which will help meet future needs of electricity. This industrial strategy will put engineering excellence and manufacturing back in the UK, which in turn develops and delivers the jobs of tomorrow.
We all know the aviation industry is in turmoil and that Rolls-Royce will not be immune. We therefore know that we are in for a difficult time and there could be bad news for lots of our people.
As you would expect and demand, we will continue to fight for every single UK job and facility in Rolls-Royce.
We commit to providing you with regular updates of our discussions. These will be factual and honest – sometimes brutally so – but most importantly free of management spin or propaganda.
Thank you for your continued support.
Steve Hibbert Ian Wilson
Tam Mitchell Mark Porter
Ian Bestwick Steve Jones
Mahf Khan Stuart Hedley