ITS TIME TO VOTE

If you are Napo member in any of the six Sodexo owned CRC’s you should have by now had a circular from Napo, together with an indicative ballot paper that you can send freepost or by e-mail to Chivalry Road (sodexooffer@napo.org.uk)

As I have consistently said since being elected as your General Secretary, one of my principal roles is to help to lead and direct the union, working alongside your National Officers and the Chivalry Road team within the accountability structures that are governed by our members. The other is to follow the direction of our members in terms of the strategy and tactics that you want me to pursue on behalf of your interests.

The Sodexo (is it severance or is it redundancy?) debacle, together with the failure of the company to respond to repeated questions from us to clarify their shabby and disrespectful offer, means that we are now asking Sodexo CRC members to give us a clear steer on whether or not we should move to a formal ballot for industrial action.

Reports reaching me from workplace meetings that have been taking place this week are encouraging in terms of what members are saying about the issues and the positive response to Napo and Unisons efforts.

Napo has acted entirely properly in trying to engage with Sodexo and their CRC senior managers and its good news that members are aware of what we have been doing and are supporting it. One thing is very clear already and that’s the level of contempt for the parent company amongst the workforce.

If you are a Sodexo member then please make your voice heard. We at Chivalry Road are the few, but our members are the many and we simply can’t do it all ourselves.

National Officers

If you are a Napo member anywhere then you also have an opportunity to vote in the current elections for the two National Vice-Chair vacancies.

Anyone standing for elected office at whatever level is showing their willingness to be out there, wanting to do their best for members. If they are prepared to do that then I would hope that those same members will spend just a few minutes and do their best to take part in the ballot. I often hear that one reason why people don’t use their ballot paper is because they don’t know the candidates. I always say: phone or email them and find out what they stand for.

Pay update and Mileage and Subsistence

We have just issued Branch Briefing’s covering these issues (Pay: see BR /83/2015) and will be sending out more news for members over the next couple of weeks.

The Mileage and Subsistence policy will come into effect from 1^st August but as it says in BR/84/2015 it needs endorsement from the NNC and some accompanying guidance for staff and a Probation Instruction which ideally ought to be written in a language that we might all understand.   

When the NEC gave it’s ‘in principle’ agreement to the final negotiated position earlier this year, it didn’t expect that all members would be ecstatic about it, but considered it was the best that could be achieved by negotiation. Nor did they expect that it would have taken NOMS several months to launch the policy and then spring it on the unions so soon to August. That they did so without letting us have sight of the guidance that it has also issued to managers is sloppy to say the least; and we were as surprised as anyone about the August start date, which we are told is out of their hands because they wanted staff to see the potential tax implications around the HMRC dispensation rules. It would have been good to have known that earlier of course.

Nevertheless, we have secured a commitment that the policy will need NNC endorsement and amendments to the NNC handbook, and that we should conclude discussions on those aspects by the end of August. Meanwhile, members are asked to refer written enquiries to Napo via their NEC or Branch Representatives whilst we are thinner on the ground than usual due to summer leave commitments.

Check off news

Finally, (and before I check off for a couple of weeks -anything but leisurely- holiday with five of my seven grandchildren) we have issued an all members mail out this week which contains encouraging news about the status of our Direct Debit (DD) Campaign. Its good progress to date, but as you can see there is still hard work to be done.

By signing the mandate to make the switch across and encouraging others to do the same (even maybe by volunteering to be point of contact for the Branch), you will be sending out a loud and clear message to other members that Napo are here, and working hard for its members in the face of a relentless agenda, and that we intend to be around for a long time yet.

Enjoy the remainder of the summer.