GMB@EDF - Customer Services Holidays

Dated No.57 December 2017

CUSTOMER SERVICES HOLIDAYS – AUGUST 2018

Dear Colleagues

Booking of holidays for August 2018, has been causing understandable issues for GMB members in some areas.

Over recent weeks, Customer Services asked to meet with your GMB national co-ordinator to discuss over subscription of ‘first choice’ holidays for August 2018 - especially the Bank holiday weekend. The company have subsequently issued a number of communications to impacted staff.

In order to be clear about why this problem had arisen, GMB requested data to assess if there were any underlying company causes behind this issue - for example, a link to the reduction in the number of directly employed Customer Services staff. The data provided by the company seems to show that the only factor is a substantial increase in the number of staff (across all sites) requesting ‘full weeks’ of leave for August 2018. In 2017, there was a bigger mix of ‘full weeks’ and ‘days’ requested which made planning easier.

Whilst the planning of holidays is not an issue for the Trade Unions to solve – GMB has insisted that whatever approach Customer Services adopts to approve leave, it must be fair, transparent and timely, given the concerns raised by GMB members.

Although the holiday allocation Customer Services work to is 11%, they have consistently given leave above this (around 15%), to try to accommodate as many holiday requests as possible. Although the requested leave for the last two weeks of August 2018 is over 25%, we have been given assurances that Customer Services will honour as much leave as possible balanced against the impact on staff working during this period.

It is clear, that if the same trends we have seen for 2018 holiday requests are taken forward into 2019 and beyond, staff will face the same issues. Given that this is a foreseeable situation, and it is management’s responsibility to manage leave requests, GMB has asked to meet the company again in early 2018.

GMB has also fed back strongly that Customer Services communications regarding these important issues for our members should have been clearer and sent out much earlier to reduce some of the stress and anxiety caused for GMB members.

If you have any issues regarding how your leave requests have been handled, please raise them straight away with your local Workplace Reps.

Yours sincerely

Justin Bowden

National Secretary

GMB Commercial Services Section