Remembrance day...

It is appropriate and right for me to dedicate today's entry to remembrance day. We must all remember those who died in a number of wars to defend basic freedoms and simple rights.

Millions of people all over the world mostly very young died so that we can all be able to be free and whilst I know and understand the arguments about imperialism and conflicts created by capitalist states competing against each other the fact remains that normal people were brutally killed and that is what we remember. Remember specifically those from smaller countries that were invaded and the hardship suffered by the Innocent civilians. More than a million people died in Greece during the second world war and thousands more after the war during the civil war that followed between the communist and the the Royalists a war inspired by the Western capitalist states who wanted to control the area. And milions more volunteers died from the parts of the world that constituted the commonwealth people who had very little to do with whatever conflicts we had in Europe Lets remember them all and make sure it doesn't happen again.

The trouble with Lambeth...

Let me start this by saying that the vast majority of what Lambeth does or wants to achieve is positive. The vast majority of those who work for the organisation are dedicated hard working public servants who have chosen to be involved because they care. That is a fact.

Lambeth Council therefore has two faces. The face and the persona which comes from those who have dedicated their professional lives to serve a community and the face of internal confusion, chaos and incompetence.

One area where things are clearly not working too well and never have done is the HR department. Now I don't want to be one of those TU guys who always has a go at comrades who work in Personnel and indeed I have many members and friends there but it must be said that this is specifically a section where there are major concerns. I already explained why the constant changes in HR have undermined the confidence of those who work there in my piece yesterday.

The best way to illustrate why things are wrong with say the policy making section of HR is to focus on Lambeth's inability to produce, consult on and agree a policy in a 'reasonable' length of time. An example of this is the issues and procedure concerning the Job Evaluation scheme. I think we are on version 12 of the policy and it still hasn't been agreed or implemented. As a result we don't have a finalised product that can be used to promote and service the objectives of the scheme. So this policy, like many others, is floating in space somewhere or as the Spanish say '.. aperdido en espace..' lost in space!

Another distaster area is the policy around Flexible Retirement. The changes in LGPS mean that Lambeth and other authorities must have a policy to allow them to consider requests for flexible retirement. Lambeth have of course not developed an approach or a policy. The situation with this is so dire now and it means that some people who are eligible for this cannot apply and expect their applications to be treated fairly. One senior HR officer has already told me this won't be a problem as all requests will be rejected. That is of course not right and not fair and it is against the spirit of what the scheme intended. An individual, for example, who is 50 today can apply for flexible retirement but she has until March 2010 to have the application considered and agreed otherwise that same person has to wait until she is 55. So if she was to be made redundant in between (which can happen) then she Will be put in a position where she has been disadvantaged because the Council have not sorted themselves out to have a fair process or policy to deal with this.

I do not think this is an acceptable situation and will be looking at gathering information about how Lambeth have communicated the changes to its staff and what process and procedure (none by the way) they have set in place to deal with applications in a fair way. I will campaign around this as it affects a number of people with long service who will be penalised because of Lambeth's incompetence. They need to be exposed for what they are!

Congratulations to Postal Workers for standing firm..

Agreement reached on postal dispute

The TUC has helped broker an agreement to end the current postal dispute. The settlement provides for 'a period of calm' in the run up to Christmas that will allow further discussions about Royal Mail modernisation to take place between management and the CWU.

The preceding two weeks had seen the TUC facilitating lengthy discussions between both sides to try to resolve the 'difficult and complex' dispute, with TUC general secretary Brendan Barber chairing talks at Congress House.

The TUC had previously assisted both parties to reach the 2007 Pay and Modernisation Agreement.

Read TUC statement on agreement @

http://www.tuc.org.uk/organisation/tuc-17206-f0.cfm

Read TUC statements on the dispute @

http://www.tuc.org.uk/organisation/tuc-17175-f0.cfm

http://www.tuc.org.uk/newsroom/tuc-17169-f0.cfm

http://www.tuc.org.uk/newsroom/tuc-17157-f0.cfm

http://www.tuc.org.uk/organisation/tuc-17153-f0.cfm

General Council statement of support for CWU @

http://www.tuc.org.uk/organisation/tuc-17139-f0.cfm

Will Lambeth ever get the HR Division it deserves?

I have been involved with major reorganisations in Lambeth for the last 21 years and have seen change after change. The HR division has been reinvented on more occasions and there have been more movements in that area than I have had visits to the toilet (apologies for the analogy)

The obsession, in my opinion, with this area of the Council is influenced by two major factors. First you have powerful predominantly male Directors who see HR as having a policing role which is something they do not like and they would prefer to have their own UDI' without having to answer to a Head of HR. These powerful empire building Directors resent the existence of HR and often try to control what HR does. The second factor that affects what happens in HR is the one around personalities and if the Head of HR happens to be weak then HR will often be pushed around. On the other hand and when the Head of HR is assertive or over the top with it there are constant wars between that section and front line Directors which then leads to an open war situation. This explains why HR in Lambeth has been centralised, then decentralised, only to be centralised and then be partially devolved. The difficulty and the product of this constant musical chairs movement comes from having a very weak HR team consisting of those who will either get fed up with the games and leave or have people who simply come in and do the minimum. That in turn produces a situation where new people are brought in with little or no experience of how the 'Levithan' works and they either get a major shock or simply put up and do the minimum.

So how can all this be challenged? Well the politicians should get more involved with this area of work and ensure that whoever is responsible for making the decisions they are aware of the strategic significance of this division. They are there to manage and deliver change and having a section full of people who are feeling insecure and unstable does not help deliver this aim? Either they do this or some of us who know a lot more about the organisation then most of the Chief Officers who have been recently appointed should start exposing this ridiculous situation (some of us know where all the skeletons are buried..) And why am I saying all these stuff right now? Because I can sense that we are about to get another reorganisation in HR pretty soon! Not right, not good and very destabilising. Get it right for God's sake!

Why the Left is wrong about Europe

I had a heated debate yesterday with a comrade at work who was opposed to my enthusiasm for a united Europe. My friend is a member of a non mainstream left wing group that have in the past come up with some good initiatives but are strongly opposed to any of us being affiliated to the Labour party and whilst I can understand that I am at a loss as to why almost all the groupings on the left are so anti Europe.

It is true that the idea of a united Europe was build on the need to 'liberalise' capital and to make it easier for Industrialists to use and abuse the system, but on the other hand we should all be more grown up and learn lessons from history. The fact is that we had two major wars on our continent in the last century and we could easily have more conflict in the near future unless we become more united. The Left in Britain should therefore concentrate on the benefits a united Europe can bring and try and get more involved with the process that would help the workers. I do not think, for example, that the Working Rights Directive would have been invented by any British government and the fact that some of the legalisation has been forced on us is actually a good thing. So whilst I understand that I am in a minority position on this one I would argue that the Left has not done its homework on this subject and more should be done to educate people about the benefits of Unity. Maybe some of them should take a trip to Lisbon?

The power of the media...

An overdressed Cheryl Cole, is she the creation of the media or has she real talent?

I watched carefully how the media decided to pick up and promote (quite randomly I would imagine) someone like Cheryl Cole. She is a member of the successful Girls Aloud group which has replaced the Spice Girls. The media made the decision to pick Cheryl up and push her upwards and as a result she has now managed to get a number one single in the charts. I am specifically concentrating on this 'media event' as I am fascinated by how it all works. It is evident that getting somewhere has very little to do with having a lot of talent (the girl can't sing) and whilst I have nothing against Cheryl Cole at all and wish her the best of luck I am just impressed by how she was even moved up the ladder and is now an 'expert judge' on the x factor show? So its not what talent you have but whether it suits the media to take you on and put the big spotlight on you. I remember only 5 weeks ago when Cheryl's single first came out how Capital FM and Choice FM played the track almost every 6 minutes on drive time morning radio shows and how after 3 weeks of that my 18 year old nice who can't stand Cheryl Cole started whistling the 'tune' almost instinctively and of course this is because mass exposure to something creates a print in ones brain. This is powerful stuff and this is the way we are all manipulated but unfortunately the key to having this at your control is to be able to be one of the powerful men in grey suits who control media outfits. PR and publicity is what makes for success these days and we can learn a lot from this.

Refuse collectors strike in Leeds

I was astonished to hear the Leader of Leeds Council come on national television and say that he had no choice but to reduce the pay for refuse collectors as the equal pay act forced him review pay and harmonise it (downwards as per usual unless you are a banker..) This is because using the method used to evaluate jobs there is little or no skill in wheeling a bin from the front of a house and onto a collection lorry as a result a collector who today earns 19k will end up with less than 14k? Well the Leader of Leeds Council is wrong and of course if the Council were to use proper evaluation system the impact the job or the action would have on the organisation or those contacts it serves would produce a better result. Employers also use Recruitment and Retention allowances or additional payments to bring pay up with market levels. It obviously becomes a problem if others who do similar jobs do not get the same payment and of course the solution to that is to give everyone doing the same sort of job the increase. So harmonising should mean bringing everyone up and not, like Leeds want to do, down! So good luck to the strikers up there for standing up for themselves!