TSD Restructuring

Last week saw a flurry of activity as GWR announced plans to restructure certain roles within their Trains Service Delivery Function. As a result, TSSA has sent those members directly affected a survey for them to complete by 10am on 8 July in advance of the company’s deadline to select staff representatives from the effected group. Please ensure you complete that survey as soon as you can upon receiving it.

Some members may not receive this as their contact information is not up to date so they should be encouraged to update this information online or contacting our membership department membership@tssa.org.uk. If any members have not received the survey they can contact Alan Valentine TSSA Organiser valentinea@tssa.org.uk or by phone on 07775912829.

Consultation

All colleagues impacted should have received details on the overview of the proposals along with a link to access documents on the detail of the changes.

They were also invited into a series of meeting at the end of last week to receive a presentation on the proposals.

Whilst the consultation seems to have a deadline for completion by the end of July 2021, Daryn McCombe stated in each of the staff meetings that they can extend those timelines to allow the consultation to take place if needed.

TSSA has asked for such an extension to allow for any TSSA members who become staff representatives to be able to have access to TSSA training that is relevant and scheduled on 22 July. This will also allow the representatives who have not been appointed yet to speak to colleagues and prepare for any collective meetings. e.g., to gather counter proposals, questions etc. 

TSSA has also written to Daryn asking for any collective consultations to take place in joint single table meetings and not divided into different groups as proposed in the current timetable for consultations with Meetings involving TSSA scheduled on 15 July and with Company appointed staff representatives on 16 July.

In short we want any and all collective consultation meetings to happen with all the reps in the one room along with TSSA appointed representatives so that everything is kept above board and transparent to all, preventing any potential for misunderstanding or differences to occur from separate meetings. The first of which should happen after the reps have had the opportunity to receive training.

Collective Bargaining

As many will know, TSSA lodged a claim for collective bargaining through the Statutory body that governs these processes, the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC). We set out by making the claim for Controllers as we had a pathway to success that had been demonstrated in other companies like GTR and South Eastern. CAC claims can be both lengthy and the hurdles to success can be high like many statutory processes. 

In the initial written response to the application, GWR stated that the bargaining unit maybe too small and suggested that the Train Service delivery department might make a more effective bargaining group. TSSA then entered in good faith to have talks with GWR on the size of the bargaining unit, but those talks were both short and no proposals were put forward by GWR to change the bargaining unit. 

As a result of these talks on the composition of the bargaining unit being fruitless, the CAC wrote to all parties advising we would need to attend a hearing on 12 July and to present any arguments by 5 July.

Out of the blue, GWR wrote to us on Monday 28^th June advising that they wished to accept the proposed bargaining unit just encompassing the Train Service Controllers. But also advised that they planned to carry out a reorganisation. On the 29 June, we agreed with GWR to enter a 30 day period to negotiate the collective bargaining agreement and the first meeting to discuss this is to take place 12 July 2021.

This success was only achieved as a result of the good work our representatives did on the ground, recruiting members demonstrating that the majority, in this case 68% of the TSC’s were willing to be TSSA members to support collective bargaining.

Ultimately Strong TSSA membership leads to collective power for you on the ground, so it is in your interest to encourage as many colleagues as possible to join TSSA. To ensure you are fairly treated and have a voice in the restructuring consultations, but also to push to widen out collective bargaining.

You are more powerful when you stick together supported by TSSA.

Please speak to your colleagues about joining TSSA, perhaps email them this communication and print it out and put it on workplace notice boards so that non-members might see it.

Colleagues can join us online.