The new performance management arrangements and the MGS - Treating guards as second-class citizens

Members will be aware that our union is already completely opposed to the new performance management arrangements that have been introduced in the MoD that is likely to result in 1 in 20 members of staff facing the sack in the next year. However, guard service members now face a double whammy with MGS management deliberately not following the MoD rules on how these new arrangements are implemented because of a serious shortage of C grades within the MGS.

MoD rules
 

The department have said, “Where there are large numbers of relatively junior grades (e.g. Band D and below) the grade level of an Reporting Officer (RO) can be reduced to keep the number of job holders to be assessed manageable. However, it must be kept as high as possible and not be below C2.”

MGS ‘rules’
 

The MGS is chronically understaffed at all levels and especially in the middle management grades of C1 and C2. Our union has been highlighting this to management and the lack of management governance for several years.

Our union has now found out that MGS management have applied to their new parent TLB (DIO) for special dispensation regarding the new performance management system. MGS senior management have made a case that, as there is a serious shortage of C grades within the MGS ranks, there should be “special” consideration given to allowing Band D managers to act as first RO’s for MGS E grades. As you can see, this totally contradicts departmental guidance on the new performance management arrangements.

DIO have now granted this special dispensation and are planning to implement this even though it is against departmental rules and to rub salt in the wounds, all of this - from the request for dispensation to the granting of it - has been conducted without the slightest attempt at consultation with our union. Aside from an extreme lack of courtesy on the part of both MGS and DIO senior management, our union believes that this exposes an astonishing disregard for our MGS members.

What this means
 

If you are a CSO4 or CSO5 working in the MGS, you will be treated differently from all other E1 and E2 grades in the department. Even within DIO, the MGS parent TLB, we will see a two tier workforce with CS04’s and CS05’s being reported on by a band D whilst E1’s and E2’s will be “afforded the luxury” of having a C2 grade as their RO.
 

The MoD guard service has only been in DIO a few months and this is the first clear sign that the department wish to forge a “two-tier workforce” mentality.

What you can do
 

Members will be aware that our union has already raised objections to the new performance management system and as we are opposing its imposition, we are now in formal dispute with our employer regarding this. The briefing,DSg/MB/45/13 issued on 25 June 13, titled, ‘Action on Performance Management begins - Guidance for Members and Branches’ gives clear guidance on how to protest against these draconian arrangements.

Our union is encouraging all members to complete the template letter attached to this briefing and issue it to their line manager. With MGS now trying to implement a further detriment, we would especially encourage PCS guard service members to complete this letter and pass to their line manager as quickly as possible.

We are now entering the busy summer period when many members will look to take leave. Nationally, our union is running a fresh period of the overtime ban from 1 July to Aug 31. We would ask all members and in particular MGS members, who remember work in a very understaffed business are, to fully observe the overtime ban to put further pressure on a department already creaking at the seams.

Conclusion
 

PCS guard service members are the backbone of our department, but in the next year, they like every other MoD civil servant will face the prospect of 1 in 20 of them being sacked. Guard service jobs throughout the country are almost identical and this means the new performance management arrangements will be especially unfair and divisive to a group of workers whose jobs give little or no opportunity to ‘go the extra mile’.

We hope that all PCS members in the MoD follow the new guidance and MGS members, in particular should consider how shoddily they have been already been treated even before this “system” has actually started.

PCS members in the guard service and elsewhere in the Ministry of Defence are not to blame for the fact that more than 25,000 civilian staff have left our department since the SDSR in the autumn of 2010, thus creating at least 25% vacant posts across the department.

If MGS senior management do not have the correct grades to undertake the new performance management system, then they should put up business cases to MoD ministers to ensure they do have the correct staffing levels. The answer is not, as is happening here, to once again make the ordinary workers in the department suffer.