As the union recognised for ex-Vodafone, ex-MBNL and ETL ‘new hires’, Prospect has been engaged in consultation with the company over the C3 transformation for some time and while we have been unable to persuade the company to retain all the UK posts we have been actively seeking ways of reducing the numbers and mitigating the impact on permanent employees whose jobs are being offshored.

The proposal sees 36 permanent roles and 39 ARP (contractor) roles being offshored.  The company has assured us, and been clear in its briefings, that its aim is to redeploy as many permanent staff as possible.

To achieve this and to seek to avoid making compulsory redundancies,

28 roles currently carried out by ARP’s will be offered as redeployment opportunities and 2 additional new roles will be created in Coventry.

The company has made proposals for an Incentivised Leaver Payment (ILP) to provide individuals with the opportunity to volunteer to leave the business.  You should have received an explanation of the terms of this offer. The offer will be opened up from 20 April, giving employees the next couple of weeks to consider their options.

We have asked that remaining and new posts are ring-fenced for those potentially at risk of redundancy and that the company actively seeks redeployment opportunities elsewhere in Ericsson, for example in releasing ARPs elsewhere and other FSO vacancies for those in scope.  This may include additional training and a trial period.

Individual consultation will be taking place with those affected from today onwards, and collective consultation will continue after the Easter break.  If you have any queries or would like to discuss how this may affect you please contact my office on 01455 555200 this week or Prospect’s onsite representative, John Bramble from next week.

We will arrange members meetings onsite in due course.

If you have colleagues who are affected by this who are not members of Prospect, please encourage them to join by visiting www.prospect.org.uk.  We are unable to assist with pre-existing individual issues so they need to join now, not later.