UNION MAN: Prospect national secretary Frank Allen.

CAN Guernsey Electricity change staff shift patterns without negotiation?
Yes, says the utility, claiming that the agreement staff signed six years ago gives it the right.
No, say the staff and their union.
And now both sides are waiting for the ruling of an industrial tribunal which will announce its finding within three weeks.
Generation engineers and control room operators took GE to the tribunal after it had proposed changing the six-man shift system to a five-man one.
The employees currently work 21 out of 28 days before having two weeks off. The new system would reduce this to one week off.
Workers claimed the proposed system lacked the flexibility of the current one and left them having to take 15 days of their annual leave during their rostered off weeks throughout the year.
The two-day tribunal at Les Cotils concluded yesterday with union representatives claiming that Guernsey Electricity did not have the unilateral right to change a system that had been in place for more than 20 years without negotiation with its staff.
But the company claimed it did.
Advocate Robert Shepherd, for the utility, said all employees had signed a joint agreement with the company in 2002.
‘The joint agreement says that management can determine the operational requirements for shift workers based on the needs of the company,’ he said.
‘At no point does it say it must be agreed by the union.’
He added that the joint agreement did not even say there needed to be consultation between management and the workers, although the company had chosen to undertake a period of consultation.
Frank Allen, national secretary of the Prospect union, said the current six-man shift system had been in place long before the joint agreement was signed and remained unaltered following its introduction. Therefore any later change should not be imposed on workers.
‘The current shift pattern was agreed through negotiations between the unions and the company,’ he said.
‘It predates the joint agreement and the joint agreement did not impact on the shift pattern.
‘We ask this tribunal to find very simply that it is a matter of negotiation between the company and recognised trade unions to change shift patterns.’
The staff are contracted to work 36 hours a week, but in both the current system and new five-man shift pattern, staff work only an average of 33.6 hours per week.
Generation engineer Dave Roussel said: ‘We do not work enough days. We are short 15.6 days a year, 2.4 hours a week.
‘We used to owe the days and paid the company back through covering sickness, coming in for meetings, being flexible for them etc.
‘Now the company wants to take these 15.6 days out of our annual leave and roster them into our days off.’