{"id":19891,"date":"2020-01-28T16:48:08","date_gmt":"2020-01-28T16:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=19891"},"modified":"2020-11-12T12:54:32","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T12:54:32","slug":"rspca-bully-boy-contracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=19891","title":{"rendered":"‘Rock bottom’ morale"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Staff at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) are to be balloted for strike action, Unite said today (January 28).<\/p>\n

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Unite said the ballot for strike action will open on Tuesday (February 4), following an overwhelming vote in a consultative ballot to reject the management\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arbitrary imposition of new \u00e2\u20ac\u0098performance pay\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 contracts. The ballot closes on Thursday, February 20.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unite represents more than 700 staff \u00e2\u20ac\u201c about half the workforce at the UK\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s leading animal charity, founded in 1824.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unite said the crux of the dispute is management\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s proposals to replace the recently negotiated incremental pay scheme with a performance pay arrangement which could exacerbate plummeting staff morale in an organisation where bullying has been endemic.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unite has criticised \u00e2\u20ac\u0098the bully boy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 tactics that the bosses have used to coerce some employees to sign the new contracts way before the 31 March deadline \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or face the sack.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a letter<\/a> to the RSPCA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s HR director Patricia Williamson, Unite regional coordinating officer Debbie Watson said that there have been no \u00e2\u20ac\u0098meaningful\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 talks about the decision to dismiss employees who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sign.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Debbie Watson wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt is therefore our view that by coming to the stated conclusion that employees will be dismissed if they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t agree to the new terms before discussions in the meetings have taken place that the Society has failed to adequately consult with them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI also note that you refer to a number of employees having already signed up to the new contracts. Feedback from those that have signed indicates that the majority have not done this willingly and that many have done this as they simply did not want to lose their jobs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bOur reps advise me that in some of the one to ones, some of our members have been in tears and extremely intimidated by the messages sent by the management team.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today (January 28), Debbie Watson called on the management to jettison their \u00e2\u20ac\u0098bully boy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 tactics and enter into constructive talks with Unite, despite the RSPCA rejecting the services of the conciliation service Acas.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Debbie Watson added, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bMembers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to sign these contracts until 31 March this year and they should not be bullied into signing them. Accompanying the contracts was an aggressive email threatening staff to sign before 20 December last year or face potential dismissal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bFollowing the overwhelming mandate we received in the consultative paper, we are now holding a full scale strike action ballot.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bMorale has never been so low, and confidence\u00c2\u00a0and trust\u00c2\u00a0in chief executive Chris Sherwood and the executive team are at rock bottom.\u00c2\u00a0Many members blame the employment of temporary external contractors at a senior level for the proposals and also the CEO for a failure in leadership, with many questioning his judgement.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unite has said, under the proposals, staff allowances, especially standby payments, will be reduced by 50 per cent. For example, an inspector will see an annual average reduction in their salary of at least \u00c2\u01412,000 and potentially as high as \u00c2\u01414,000. Other front line, animal and wildlife centre staff face similar deductions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In an open letter to Chris Sherwood, Unite has said that recent talks over pay and new contracts were \u00e2\u20ac\u0098deliberately restrictive, disingenuous and designed to fail\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Staff at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) are to be balloted for strike action, Unite said today (January 28).   Unite said the ballot for strike action will open on Tuesday (February 4), following an overwhelming vote in a consultative ballot to reject the management\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arbitrary imposition of new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[1043],"wps_subtitle":"RSPCA workers to hold strike ballot over new detrimental \u00e2\u20ac\u0098bully boy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 contracts","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19891"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19891"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24743,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19891\/revisions\/24743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}