GWR: New Management Grade Collective Bargaining Agreement Elections

I’m pleased to announce that we now have a new Collective Bargaining Agreement agreed with GWR. The intention of this agreement is to cover all Management grades who GWR have accepted will have collective bargaining rights with TSSA union through demonstrating the majority are in membership, within their respective bargaining group/constituency.

With big changes planned for the Rail industry that will come from Great British Railways and a long list of other reasons more and more people from within the Management Grades are recognising that it is in their interest to encourage their colleagues to join TSSA and Win Collective Bargaining to have a voice in what happens to their jobs!

For more than 3 years TSSA has held Collective Bargaining rights for the Management grades working in the Control centre and wider AOM team and more recently this year TSSA demonstrated through an independent check with ACAS that we had the majority of members in Driver Management, Driver Learning Management, Driver Competency Specialists and the Customer Service Manager (Previously known as Customer Ambassadors). Since then, we have been in negotiations with the company to renegotiate the existing agreement so that it covers all Management Grades who have Collective Bargaining within GWR. It will ensure that if we have new/additional Management populations in future who want Collective Bargaining they can easily be housed by this agreement and also as the previous Control agreement didn’t previously have 3 tiers of representatives like other grades in the business for us to introduce a new tier of “local representatives”.

The main delay has been reaching agreement on the numbers of representatives but now that we’re in agreement I can write to the affected members directly and run these elections.

In terms of the headline numbers the management groups mentioned above including control will now be represented at company council level by 2 management representatives (an increase of 1).

With a new Management Divisional Council (MDC) forum being created to replace the existing Control (TSD and R&R) Joint council forum. With many of the issues discussed at that forum expected to be dealt with locally. It is important to point out that the Constituencies Covered by Control in TSD, Network Delivery, Performance and Rosters and Resources will have no reduction in the total number of reps as part of these proposals, but they will be reflected as Local representatives instead.

There will be 6 constituencies represented at Management Divisional Council with 1 representative from each group as laid out below (please note that the Driver Competence Specialists will be represented by the Driver Management constituency):

CONSTITUENCY	JOB TITLES REPRESENTED	NUMBER OF TSSA REPRESENTATIVES
TRAIN SERVICE DELIVERY (TSD) INCLUDING PERFORMANCE STATEGY	Delay Attribution Manager, Delay Team Leaders (level 2), Delay Attributors (Level 1), Strategic Operations Manager, Systems Manager, Train Service Delivery Managers, Incident Managers, Duty Service Delivery Managers, Train Service Managers, Fleet Operations Controllers, Customer Experience Managers, Customer Information Coordinators.	1
NETWORK DELIVERY AND PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT -OUTBASED	Operations Delivery Manager, Lead Area Operations Managers, Area Operations Managers, Operational Resource Assistants, Train Running Support Controllers	1
ROSTERING AND RESOURCES	Crew Delivery Team Leaders, Crew Delivery Managers, Roster Managers, Train Crew Analysts, Systems Process Manager, Training Release Manager, Training Release Coordinator.	1
DRIVER MANAGEMENT	Driver Depot Managers, Driver Standards Managers, Team Interface Managers, Driver Competence Specialists	1
DRIVER LEARNING MANAGEMENT	Driver Training Capability Managers, Driver Training Implementation Manager, Driver Training Interface Managers, Driver Learning Team Managers (Sometimes referred to as DLM Team Leaders), Driver Learning Managers, and Driver Academy Manager	1
CUSTOMER SERVICE	Lead Customer Service Manager (previously known as Senior Customer Ambassador), Customer Service Manager (previously known as Customer Ambassadors)	1

*if Job titles change in the future they will still be covered by this Annex and collective bargaining procedure

In terms of Local Constituencies these will be structured under 5 constituencies/Local Divisional Councils as follows:

CONSTITUENCY	JOB TITLES REPRESENTED	NUMBER OF TSSA REPRESENTATIVES
TRAIN SERVICE DELIVERY (TSD) INCLUDING PERFORMANCE STRATEGY	Delay Attribution Manager, Delay Team Leaders (level 2), Delay Attributors (Level 1), Strategic Operations Manager, Systems Manager, Train Service Delivery Managers, Incident Managers, Duty Service Delivery Managers, Train Service Managers, Fleet Operations Controllers, Customer Experience Managers, Customer Information Coordinators.	3
NETWORK DELIVERY AND PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT -OUTBASED	Operations Delivery Manager, Lead Area Operations Managers, Area Operations Managers, Operational Resource Assistants, Train Running Support Controllers	2
ROSTERING AND RESOURCES	Crew Delivery Team Leaders, Crew Delivery Managers, Roster Managers, Train Crew Analysts, Systems Process Manager, Training Release Manager, Training Release Coordinator.	2
DRIVER MANAGEMENT	Driver Depot Managers, Driver Standards Managers, Team Interface Managers, Driver Competence Specialists Driver Training Capability Managers, Driver Training Implementation Manager, Driver Training Interface Managers, Driver Learning Team Managers (Sometimes referred to as DLM Team Leaders), Driver Learning Managers, and Driver Academy Manager	1 DRIVER MANAGEMENT - EAST 1 DRIVER MANAGEMENT - EAST 1 DRIVER MANAGEMENT - EAST 1 DRIVER LEARNING MANAGEMENT
CUSTOMER SERVICE	Lead Customer Service Manager (previously known as Senior Customer Ambassador), Customer Service Manager (previously known as Customer Ambassadors)	2

*if Job titles change in the future they will still be covered by this Annex and collective bargaining procedure

I will now write directly to those members within each constituency to lay out how local elections will work for them, once local representatives are in place then we can determine who will fill the Management Divisional Council and Company Council seats from amongst the representatives. Only TSSA members will be able to stand for nomination, nominate colleagues to stand or vote in any elections if there are more candidates than positions.

If you are receiving this but are not in one of the above constituencies but would like to work to win collective bargaining in your area then please contact Alan Valentine on how you might assist in doing this on valentinea@tssa.org.uk what has been crucial to our success is members on the ground being willing to talk to their colleagues and encourage them to join TSSA to ensure that you have a voice in the company and industry! Can you make a difference for you and your colleagues? Your colleagues can join online at www.tssa.org.uk/join