Report from Environment, Economy and Culture stewards group

for AGM - 15 Feb 07

1. This has been a year of change, bringing Directorates together to form this new one has initially caused a few upsets in various groups as it has taken a long time to finalise the structure and some changes to staff positions are still occurring.
2. There is also the restructuring of the Local service groups that has just started to happen now that all the staff have been consulted properly, through UNISON stewards working well with management.
3. We initially started the year from a position where we believed that management were trying to do their own thing again with lack of consultation, but through stewards working hard to resolve our disputes, over many meetings with management and their efforts in researching all reasons for change, We have agreed the way forward.
4. We have managed to consult on all aspects and timescales for change, this is still happening, and we have meetings on a monthly basis.
5. Libraries have joined us with their stewards and came with the problem of closures which has been reduced to four at present.
6. We have a strong group of stewards and Health & Safety reps attending meetings and hopefully this will stay the same even though we have reduced from 8 Local Service Groups to 3.
7. It is good to have input from the other groups as we can all grow from each others knowledge and experience.
8. This has been a year where the work in the directorate has continued as usual but because of the corporate programme of Job Evaluation a lot of other work involving stewards has been delayed.
9. The implementation of Job Evaluation has not hit our directorate too badly in relation to others but it has caused some problems which will require stewards to be available for appeals which should be impacting soon and with management support we can assist.
10. Finally we may not all see eye to eye on every aspect but our tenacity at trying to resolve problems has worked well.
11. As chair of the group I want to thank all for their support, but give the most gratitude to Sherri Henry who has managed to do all she has in being my voice while I have been unavailable.