Monthly Archives: May 2021

Outsourcing of Bristol City Council Staff to Bristol Waste

Via Bristol Branch of Unison

Around two-hundred Bristol City council staff will be transferring to the Teckal company Bristol Waste on 1 June (Bristolian Passim). UNISON remains wholly against it.

After failing to persuade the Labour administration not to go ahead with this, UNISON and the trades unions Unite and GMB have tried to persuade the two employers to adopt a position colloquially known as TUPE++. That is TUPE with further protections based on the protections they had previously enjoyed.

The employers have refused all our requests. The decision to not meet us half way or make any concessions at all pretty much sums up not just UNISON’s relationship with the employers but the other unions’ as well.

In previous statements we pointed out that ‘Terms and Conditions’ are only some of the rights held by staff and that other rights written into policies will not transfer. So we have just been told that the rights within the ‘Code of Practice on Investigations’ (if you remember the Greens tabled a question to full council about it recently) will not transfer to Bristol Waste. So the right (in black-and-white) to see evidence against you in an investigation before you are interviewed is removed.

The matrix for what you will and won’t receive is quite complicated and although we are not saying you won’t receive fairness at Bristol Waste, we can’t see any compensatory policy for our staff for the removal of such a right.

Nor will the sickness policy transfer. How many absences someone can have before being dismissed will be based on Bristol Waste and not BCC policy. The Bristol Waste policy is based on the’ Bradford Factor‘ which we don’t think has a very good reputation.

We have been accused of not knowing what we are talking about (even by the press) and we will take no pleasure in saying ‘we told you so’, which we expect to be saying often in the months to come.

We discussed ‘measures’ transferring to Bristol Waste and we failed to persuade them to make any changes at all. We agreed that Bristol Waste is ACAS compliant. but we see ACAS compliancy as an absolute minimum a civilised society should tolerate. We are dismayed to find that the powers-that-be find ACAS minimums to be satisfactory.

Our call to our members in cleaning to contact us has had very little response. We can’t go forward without consulting with you, so please get in touch if you want us to take action. Our response from security has been pretty good and we will be organising further action with you – if you give us your consent – in the future.

THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING HALF CABINET: A REVEREND REES ADVENTURE

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Eighteen days after his election and the Reverend Rees still hasn’t managed to find a full cabinet for his second term.

Despite reappointing his ‘Infamous Five’, the two deputy mayors – Craig “Dick” Cheney and Asher “The Slasher” Craig – his anointed successor – Helen “Oh My” Godwin – court favourite – Nicola “La La” Beech – and aging makeweight – HRH Helen of Holland – Rees still has no cabinet members to run Transport, Housing or Education.

Neither is the Reverend intending, it seems, to reach out to the Greens by giving them some cabinet seats after they decimated his councillors and destroyed his majority at the election.

What is his plan then? Is the Reverend going to end all pretence of democracy in Bristol and simply let council managers and appointed One City business wankers run these departments any way they see fit?

Questions are also being asked about the appointment of La La Beech to the Climate, Ecology, Waste and Energy brief. Here, among other things, she’ll nursemaid through Rees’s deranged City Leap public asset sell-off to a multinational company. This may result in the burning of as much shit as possible in Avonmouth to generate loads of lucrative dirty (surely clean? Ed.) energy.

Alas, it turns out that La La Beech, in her day job as a corporate PR consultant, lists one of her clients as the National Grid. is there a conflict of interest here at all?

We think we should be told.

POLITICOS SILENT ON FAMILY EVICTIONS

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From ‘Human Being’ in the comments

Yesterday saw the planned eviction of a travellers site on Glenfrome Road, Eastville. When I say planned I mean in so much as police, bailiffs and a crane were organised to remove people and vans from land that West & Wales Utilities say they want to use.

So what provisions where planned for these people, including children? Councillors for Eastville, Labour’s Marley Bennett and the Green’s Lorraine Francis*, both failed to do anything or say anything. Well then Green Party leader Paula O’Rouke? Nothing.

So then surely Helen Godwin must have stuck up for families, homes and children? She must have had a plan in place to ensure provision for these vulnerable people now homeless on a wet and windy day. Nothing. No alternative site lined up. No hot meals ready for those evicted forcibly. No care from this Labour Party politician. Not present at the scene, nothing. Not a word.

What from the mayor who’s well versed in issues concerning oppressed minorities and equality?

HE WENT TO THE PRESS TO TELL THEM ELECTRIC SCOOTERS ARE TO STAY!

* We have been informed that the site is actually in the Lockleaze Ward and the councillors are the Green Party’s Heather Mack and David Wilcox

ARSELICKERS TO SUE GOBSHITES AS FAVOUR TO REES?

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HR meeting — “The best HR Committee meeting in years”

With the election safely over and the Reverend Rees restored to his rickety pulpit held together with gaffer tape and the prayers of his best friends, including Bristol City Council Chief Exec Mike “Billie Jean” Jackson and Monitoring Officer, “L’il” Tim O’Gara, it’s time to get down to the serious business of governing Bristol.

And the first item on the agenda? Is, er, getting a couple of gullible council managers to sue the Reverend’s chief political critics, Councillor Gary “Meathead” Hopkins and Councillor Richard “Bunter” Eddy for defamation!

It’s been alleged in the Nazi Post that our dear old friend, the council’s useless pillock of a Director of Workforce, John “Bedwetter” Walsh, and his latest dimwitted sidekick, Facilties boss David Martin “Bore-mann”, have “served [Bunter and Meathead] with a defamation claim demanding a retraction, public apology and damages”!

This appears to be in relation to comments Meathead and Bunter made at at a Human Resources Committee Meeting on February 18 and reported in The BRISTOLIAN at the time.

In response to ludicrous claims from Walsh and Martin that cleaning and security staff that they had formally consulted were entirely in favour of being outsourced to Bristol Waste from Bristol City Council, Bunter replied that the bosses’ comments were “worthy of Dr Goebbels and the Third Reich.”

Meathead also frankly responded to Walsh and Martin’s unevidenced claims with “I don’t believe a word of what’s been presented to us by the management side.”

Get on standby, then, for the trial of century as two idiot council managers attempt to sue two councillors for making fair comment on the basis of the evidence presented to them.

On the one hand there was ZERO evidence presented by Walsh and Martin to back their claims. On the other there were TWO trade union written statements that the staff involved were deeply unhappy with the management outsourcing proposals.

What will M’Lud make of it all?

BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL: BOILERPLATE COUNCILLOR ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

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First, I would like to thank the Returning Officer for organising these incredible elections that were so fantastically well run. He totally deserves the £10k he’s earned today. Although he obviously hasn’t. The whole thing’s been a total bloody shambles hasn’t it? Except I’m not going to say so. This is because he’s written a document called the Member-Officer Protocol that says, as a councillor, I’m not allowed to criticise him or any of his high-earning colleagues at the council and if I do he can complain to himself about it and find I have contravened something or other. Then he can punish me by announcing I have done something terribly wrong. How could I possibly be expected to say what I really think with a threat like that hanging over me from one of the thickest posh lawyers with no power you’re ever likely to meet?

I would also like to thank my party and their workers for all the support they have given me. You have all been tremendous. In return I now commit to doing anything the leadership ask of me, no matter how daft, destructive or contrary to the interests of the city and the people who voted for me it is. This is my pledge to you my glorious tribe of fellow drones.

And finally, I’d like to thank the idiots who voted for me. You have all been really useful and I will see you all again when I come back and seek reelection in three years time. Rest assured, I’ll have dreamed up some excuses by then for my inexcusable behaviour toward you, your concerns and your neighbourhood. And I’ll have plenty more bullshit I can feed you in my rather sad and pathetic pursuit of a little bit of status and power.

Will that do?

Now where’s my expenses form? No, not that one. That’s the declaration of interest form. We don’t need to bother with all that red tape nonsense do we?

[Ends],