RepsDirect No 158 - 29 November 2002



From
Head of Health, Roger Spiller General Secretary, Roger Lyons

1 Agenda For Change

For your further information I attach the letter sent yesterday evening from Andrew Foster to Chief Executives. It was marked Restricted but as the press this morning were quoting freely from it I thought you would appreciate seeing it in full.

In yesterdays commentary on the Milburn Statement, we referred to the work yet to be done on looking at career progression and job profiles and thus grading of many senior staff particularly Health Care Scientists. That work is underway and will ensure that highly skilled, professional members, often with an international reputation, will be properly graded in the new arrangements. Many positions have been left out to date because the cohort was small and thus not a priority for the initial stages. We are now putting that right. Any rumours of senior staff being hard done by at this stage are merely a reflection of the lack of profiles to date and thus should be ignored. You can be assured that Amicus will continue to work hard on improving profiles for all our members where there is any doubt.

The full information with a nearly complete range of profiles, there still may be some individuals who will require individual profiles, should be available in mid January. Amicus has arranged a day long meeting of the Health NAC for 13th January to which will be invited representatives from the Occupational committees and Regional Advisory committees for a formal decision on the Amicus position. All Regional Officers with NHS responsibility are also being invited for their information. Immediately afterwards we shall be arranging one or more meetings in each Amicus region, details will be published by the end of next week.

After that a workplace ballot will be held. It is our intention that regional officers will be holding associated meetings to explain AfC and how it impacts on Amicus members. Regional Officers have been asked to ensure there is a Senior cross Trust representative in each trust who will be responsible for the balloting process. When Amicus have the vote it will determine the Amicus position on the Whitley Council which ultimately will say yes or no to AfC.

The list of Early Implementers is attached. Your Regional Officer will be in touch to start the process of ensuring we have sufficient reps in each of the areas in which we organise. You can help this process now by seeking contacts who know and understand the jobs done by themselves and their immediate colleagues. This will be crucial for correct placing of jobs into the new grading structure. We shall then be arranging training for reps and contacts in each of the Trusts involved.


We shall continue to keep you informed about developments as they become publishable.

Click here to open the pdf version of the letter published today.

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