Thursday, 21 May 2009

PSM Reorganisation LNW

I attended the staff briefing on the PSM Reorganisation / LNW at Bletchley depot today. Everything that was revealed wasn't a surprise, its been expected to come at some point. But even so, it's stunned people, and the realisation is sinking in that a good few of them will be out of a job shortly.

Numerous questions were asked and some answer's given to some of them, though not many. They said that they'll set up a single point of contact for questions from affected staff, that they may have over the coming days. Not every questions possible immediately pop's into one's mind at the time, they said that they would come back with answers to as many of the questions as is possible. All the job losses as you know so far, are confined to those in office posts, techs, SM's and the like. 11 supervisor posts out of 17 supervisor posts going at Bletchley, and that just them, its quite a major hit.

There were questions on whether staff who reapplied for the post's they were in, would stay on their T&C's. There wasn't an answer given to that one, one way or they other. Another question was that, staff reapplying for available post's, would seniority be a major factor in the selection of who gets the post? This got a distinctly negative answer, with skills and attributes that a candidate could bring to the role being stated as the optimum qualities that they'd look for. Would they seek voluntary redundancies first? No clear answer. These and many more were asked, and I'm sure more will be asked over the coming days.

So far, no impact at all on the gangs is foreseen. Which is a good sign, though I'm not sure how long that'll last for with the number of us being left at home because there is no work for us to do? Cant see it lasting like this for a great length of time.

The possibility of the need to enter into talks to harmonise T&C's was stated as being very likely by Cheryl Smith at some stage in the future, yesterday during a brief phone conversation with her about today's meeting.

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