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British Gas Staff News

Dear Member,

In this update you will find information regarding the following:-

• Centrica Pension Plan: Member-Nominated Trustee Director Elections -
  Karl Whitehead (British Gas Cardiff) - Nominated



• Trade Unions Propose A Joint Review of the Company's Equalities Provisions and Practices
• Level 7 Holiday Year
• Level 8 Holidays
• Pensions
• Pre- Retirement Leave
• Grievance and Disciplinary Procedures

Centrica Pension Plan: Member-Nominated Trustee Director Elections - Karl Whitehead (British Gas Cardiff) - Nominated

Members will have started to receive their ballot papers for a vacancy on the Board of Trustees of the Centrica Pension Plan. The Board of Trustees compromises of 7 Trustee Directors with at least 3 Member-Nominated Directors and 4 appointed directly by Centrica Plc; these include a professional Independent Trustee. All Member-Nominated Directors are elected by members who are in the pension plan and are normally appointed to stand for 3 years.

We would like to urge all members who are in the Centrica Pension Plan to vote in the Trustee elections for your Branch Secretary, Karl Whitehead. Please place a '1' in the box next to his name as an indication of your first choice. Furthermore, we would also like to ask you insert a '2' next to James McPherson, as your second choice.

All contributing (existing) members and pensioners (retired) of the Centrica Pension Plan qualify to vote in this election, which includes those who were in the final salary Centrica Pension Scheme transferred to the new 2008 section of the Centrica Pension Plan at the beginning of this year and members of the former Centrica Management Pension Scheme.

The votes and result will be determined by the single transferable vote method.

How the System Works:

Voters rank the candidates, putting a '1' for their favourite, a '2' for the next, and so on. If the voter's first choice candidate does not need their vote, either because he or she is elected without it, or because he or she has too few votes to be elected, then the vote is transferred to the voter's second choice candidate, and so on.

In this way, most of the votes help to elect a candidate and far fewer votes are wasted. An important feature of STV is that voters can choose between both of their own and of other preferred candidates.

Trade Unions Propose A Joint Review of the Company's Equalities Provisions and Practices

At the NJC held on 9th June the trade unions submitted a proposal to jointly review the Equalities provisions and practices of the company. This would identify strengths and any potential gaps and is part of UNISON's strategy to work with all employers to embed the best principles and practices designed to eliminate unfair discrimination and to promote equality. The proposed review would include the following issues

• Monitoring -Are there provisions in place to monitor the activities of the company aimed at eliminating all forms of unfair discrimination in the workplace.
• Composition of the Workplace - Are workplaces representative of the communities where they are located? Is enough being done to attract under representative groups?
• Disability and Sexual Orientation - How is the company tackling discrimination and promoting equality?
• Recruitment - Who applies for jobs and how and where are vacancies advertised? Are measures being taken to attract under representative groups?
• Bullying and Harassment - How does the company identify cases of bullying and harassment either by colleagues or third parties.
• Training and Development - How is the company using its training and development resources to promote greater equality?
• Employee Networks - Can employees use electronic networks to contact each other and discuss common concerns? E.g. black members and LGBT members.
• How does the company lead on equality issues? Are specific staff tasked with promoting good equalities practice?

The company responded sympathetically to this initiative and agreed to take the proposal away to fully consider it. UNISON hopes that a joint project team can begin work on this review in the near future.

Level 7 Holiday Year

As some members will be aware the company have proposed that the holiday year for Level 7 employees should be brought into line with the Flexa Scheme year - June to May. At present there are a variety of practices with some already on this while others are on birthday based leave years. UNISON will be consulting Level 7 members on this change and feedback will be given to the management team following that. The national TU team do not believe this change should cause any detriment for members.

Level 8 Holidays

Having discussed changes to Level 7 employees the trade unions asked for clarification on the company's approach to Level 8 employees. The management team confirmed they were happy to review holiday year timings. The trade unions raised their concerns about how some sites were managing employees' requests for holiday leave. It was clear that while some sites were operating pretty well, others were taking a more restricted approach. UNISON has made it clear that staff should not face unreasonable restrictions on taking leave, whilst acknowledging that the company would need to maintain a good service to its customers. The management team agreed to look into the concerns. A small joint working group will look into the arrangements for L8 holidays.

Pensions

Following the recent elections for pension fund committee members a number of concerns had been raised regarding the complexity of the present arrangements. Members have said that after the pension changes over 12 months ago they expected that the 'pension governance' systems would have been reviewed and simplified. The trade unions proposed that a meeting of the Ad Hoc Pension Group should be convened to discuss these issues in more detail. It was agreed that a more detailed meeting on pensions would be arranged.

Pre- Retirement Leave

The management team have tabled a proposal to review the continued provision of the Pre Retirement Leave Scheme. They have explained that in their view they contravene the Age Discrimination Regulations and stand open to be challenged in the courts. The trade unions while appreciating the uncertainty surrounding schemes like this, made it clear that they intended to explore the feasibility of retaining the provisions. However since the existing scheme was agreed many years ago the circumstances surrounding retirement and members expectations have changed. Employees now have a right to ask to continue working beyond age 65. Therefore it was agreed to explore the issue further and to obtain more information on how the present scheme needs to change.

Grievance and Disciplinary Procedures

Recently the existing procedures were reviewed to bring them into line with the law and the latest ACAS advice. The position reached is that some final rewording has been proposed by the trade unions. Once this has been reviewed by the Company this policy will be relaunched.

To obtain your own copy of the bulletin, please click here [word document]

Members are reminded that they can contact their local representative to express their views or to forward any questions. Alternatively, please feel free to email us at queries@unisoncymruwalesgas.org.uk - other contact methods may also be found at the bottom of this message.

Regards,

Unison Cymru/Wales Gas

Contact us with your queries:

• by email - queries@unisoncymruwalesgas.org.uk
• by speaking with your local UNISON representative - click here
• or online - click here


All communication will be dealt by a UNISON representative
and will be treated confidentially.

• British Gas Business - Level 8 Pay Award
• Moving from BGT employment contracts to BGB employment contracts
• British Gas - it's the ONE you know!!
• Bringing Metering In House
• Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures
• Holiday Years

To find out more about the above, please visit our website or click here.

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