Connect Merger with Prospect Approved

Connect members have voted decisively to merge with Prospect, with over 88% of those voting supporting the proposal. This move will create the UK’s largest managerial and professional union, representing professional members in the private and public sectors and across a diverse range of occupations.

Adrian Askew, Connect’s General Secretary, said:

“I am delighted that our members have strongly backed plans to merge with Prospect. This promises an exciting future, and we look forward to working closely with colleagues in Prospect, sharing our expertise and our innovative approaches to trade unionism to represent and protect our members”.

Connect members will be part of a dedicated sector for communications workers within Prospect, benefiting from a shared focus on delivering for professional members and a commitment to a positive agenda. Adrian Askew added that:

“This merger will help us to realise our vision of creating a union to protect and represent our professional members throughout their careers, with their union membership as a vital part of their career plans. We share Prospect’s commitment to a focus on the issues that really matter at work, working proactively with our members and their industry to shape the future of the world of work”.

Paul Noon, General Secretary of Prospect, said: “This is a great result and confirms Prospect as the UK’s fastest growing union.

“Our strong focus on Prospect as a professional union for professional people has been shown to have wide appeal. This year alone we have seen nearly 25,000 new members join us, ranging from telecommunications specialists in Connect to aircraft safety engineers in the Association of Licensed Aircraft Engineers and public sector workers in the Jersey Civil Service Association.”

Connect Merger Ballot

Ballot papers have been sent to all members at home to have the final say on the recommended merger with Prospect. Members are strongly urged to return your papers immediately given the likelihood of disruption to postal services.

All Connect members will take the final decision on the merger in a ballot which is now open and will close on November 3, following the decision by Connect delegates to endorse merger with Prospect at the union’s Biennial Conference in June. All members are urged to return their ballot papers immediately due to potential disruption in postal services.

Connect Prospect Merger

Connect’s Conference has this week clearly decided that the union should merge with Prospect. The decision was taken at the end of a lengthy and very positive debate, where the merits of merger, and of merger with either Prospect or the Communications Workers Union, were considered in great detail.

The ultimate decision to merge rests with members so we will now draw up a legally binding agreement between Prospect and Connect, which will need to be endorsed in a ballot of members. This is a legal requirement, so the ballot will be a statutory ballot – and that means that it will have to be conducted by post.

We aim to conclude discussions with Prospect over the summer and hold the ballot in the autumn. The merger itself is planned to take formal effect on 1 January 2010.

Connect to Merge With Prospect.

At Connect’s Biennial conference this morning after a thorough debate conference voted to merge with Prospect by overwhelming majority.

Connect Conference / Merger Debate

Connect’s BT and Biennial Conferences start on Monday. This biennial conference is a key one for Connect as the major item on the table is the merger propositions.

So if your going to Blackpool next week see you there and if your not check back regularly for updates on the conferences.

If possible we may be putting up a short interview once the merger decision is made.

Employer wants your facebook password

Lets hope the staggeringly bad idea from over the pond does not make it over here (though Mr Justice Eady might beg to differ)

Bozeman City A a small town in Montana has created something of a fire storm when it was exposed as requiring applicants for jobs to hand over their passwords to various websites.

The City’s background Cheek requirement state:

“Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,” the City form states.

Apparently here are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords.

Given the propensity for dodgy employment practices to make there way from the USA lets hope in this instance this is one bad idea that doesn’t cross the Atlantic.

Peppone

PS Ill leave commenting on the stupid Judgment in the Night Jack Case till i have calmed down what was the Times thinking!

PPS the Times Chapel might want to start checking the NUJ’s rule book and re reading the bit about bringing the Profession /Union into Disrepute.

PPPS wonder if we will see an Emergency motion at next weeks Conference.

DOJ Investigating SV over collusion to hold down wages.

An interesting story reported in the Gawker (the home of the remnants of Vallywag the SV Snark Blog ) the some of the big names of tech are being investigated for colluding by not poaching staff from each other.

The original stories where by the Washington Post and the NYT 

The NYT says

A December 2007 e-mail message written by a Google recruiter and obtained by The New York Times suggests that the company might have had an agreement with Apple on recruiting.

Laura Sheppard, a contract recruiter at Google, sent the e-mail message to a job candidate asking him to put her in touch with another potential candidate. “It is a bit touchy since he works for Apple,” Ms. Sheppard wrote, adding that Google had “a nonsolicit agreement with them.”

Google declined to comment on its hiring practices or on the e-mail message, whose authenticity could not be independently verified.

As Gawker says its interesting that People make a big play of being all about the free market – but when it comes to us grunts on the ground “Not so much”

New Blog From Connect Research

Connected Research is the name for a new blog for Connect’s research department. A blog seeks to provide information and comment on a range of issues of specific interest and Connected Research is no different: the blog will act as a regularly maintained resource for the union on a wide range of issues, including pay and conditions, pensions, telecoms regulation and policy, and social and economic trends. The aim is not to duplicate existing Connect communications but to look at, and link to, the wider press on these themes. More than that, however, a blog also seeks to act as a forum for online comment and debate between its readers.

Congratulations on Calvin on joining the Blogsphere  I did get a few odd looks a couple of years back at conference when we coved the conference sort of live.

You can find Connected Research at: http://connectedresearch.wordpress.com.

Nortel Does a Visteon and Fraks over Its Employees

Nortel has made has taken a leaf out of Visteon and made 220 Nortel employees, including a considerable number of Connect members, redundant at the end of March with no notice, no company redundancy pay and no prior consultation.

The people affected were summoned to meetings at Maidenhead and Harlow on 27 March to be told that their employment would cease on at the end of that month and that they would have to apply for statutory redundancy pay from the state National Insurance Fund.

Although Nortel went into partial administration in January of this year it is still trading. Employees had been told that the objective of administration was to secure the future of the company and that the message to Nortel customers was ‘business as usual’. They had also been assured that if redundancies were unavoidable there would be full consultation with employees and their representatives in line with the company’s obligations under UK employment law. In fact, there was no consultation at all, and dismissal came completely out of the blue for those made redundant in March. Nortel people not directly affected first heard about the redundancies either from their sacked colleagues or through press reports and the blogosphere.

Connect is supporting Nortel members made redundant in seeking what legal redress is available for Nortel’s failure to consult on the question of redundancy. The union is also advising members still working in Nortel on how they can stand up for their right to be treated with dignity and in line with the law, and has written to Lord Mandelson, the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, to highlight the injustice and bad practice of Nortel’s actions. The current difficult economic conditions are no excuse for companies treating employees badly and evading their legal responsibilities.

In other news (and why does this not surprise me) In March, Nortel went to court for the right to pay eight senior executives share in a $45m bonus pool Lets hope Canadas Peremier has the balls to sack the CEO as Obama did to GM.

Fair Play on Redundancy Pay Video

Since Redundancy pay was introduced in 1965 its value has decline drastically in real terms Due to real term increases in wage levels and inflation, the current value of SRP is just 56% of the UK’s average weekly wage.

The Labour MP Lindsay Hoyle is currently attempting to secure legislative change in the House of Commons via his Private Members Bill, which calls for the calculation mechanism to be reviewed.

On Friday the bill had its first reading an survived this round with enough MPs turning up for the debate to make sure the bill did not get talked out.

Unions Together have done a short campaign video