Government withdraws AfC 'Joint Statement' 02/06/11

Summary:

The government has withdrawn the agreement "Agenda for Change and NHS Contractors Staff - A Joint Statement‟. The move follows the government's abolition of the two-tier workforce agreement and means that, for new contracts, contractors will be free to offer different terms and conditions of employment to new starters working on public sector contracts. See below for further details.

In full:

"Agenda for Change and NHS Contractors Staff - A Joint Statement‟ was issued by the Department of Health, NHS Employers, the CBI, the Business Services Association and NHS trades unions following the introduction of the two-tier workforce in 2005. It extended Agenda for Change (AfC) terms and conditions to staff that had transferred outside the NHS before the introduction of AfC in 2004 and applied to contracts for soft facilities management (Soft FM) services. Staff that transferred after this date secured AfC terms under TUPE regulations and were unaffected.

The letter withdrawing the agreement sent by the Department of Health to those party to the agreement states that:

"Following the abolition of the Two Tier Code, NHS organisations and contactors can no longer rely on the previous Government's policy of "overall no less favourable" nor the commitment by those party to the Joint Statement that it is, "commended by them as a model for the NHS subject only to the normal processes required by member organisations for consultation and notification of members"...

Following the abolition the Code, the Department believes that it can no longer feature as part any future contracting arrangements and is therefore withdrawn with immediate effect."

The withdrawal of the Joint Statement will, in practice, have the same effect on the relevant groups of staff to the abolition of the two-tier workforce agreement (Code of Practice on Workforce Matters in Public Sector Service Contracts). Contracting authorities can still apply the terms of the code and UNISON would strongly argue that this is what should still happen.

UNISON‟s Bargaining Support Unit has produced a briefing: „Withdrawal of Two Tier Codes‟ that outlines the impact of the abolition of the code on new and existing contracts and negotiating points that branches can use to prevent and limit the development of two-tier workforces. The briefing is available at: www.unison.org.uk/bargaining/index.asp