Looking for a Transfer or Promotion, tough if LU get their way!

Staff have recently been informed by several managers that a freeze on nominations for SAMF positions was in place, but after the Functional reps raised this at the last Functional council meeting LU flatly refused that a freeze was in place and will confirmed this in a staff report scheduled to be published this week.

However it has come to light over the last few days that there are still many vacant SAMF positions across the combine which LU are refusing to fill citing the reasons that some groups are over established in the CSA grade and are therefore off setting the cost against the SAMF grade. The more alarming thing is members are being denied flexible working and promotions as a result of LU not adhering to their Transfer and Promotion policy.

This excuse is absolute rubbish and is being used as smoke and mirrors to hide their plans to drastically cut SAMF jobs under the upcoming Operational Strategic Plan (OSP). LU Resources the department responsible for filling vacancies and identifying the need to run recruitment campaigns has made blunder after blunder and has got itself in such a mess over the last few years that Transfer & Promotions (T&P) have all but come to a halt, denying members the promotions (and in turn higher pay) many have been waiting over two years to get, and/or Transfers to locations more suitable to them.

The latest fiasco is the situation regarding the ‘over established’ staff (O.E.S) who, if LU get their way will be moved to any location that LU decide not caring about the individuals traveling time to or from work, this includes all grades but primarily CSA’s.

The amazing thing about this though is that around 18 months ago there were 150+ CSA O.E.S and your Union reps told management that the best way to sort this out would be to lift the 12 month bar and allow T&P to happen as this would create vacancies that could be back filled from other staff who had nominated moves or for promotion opportunities, LU carried out only half the exercise (i.e. Transfers) and only doing this reduced the O.E.S number to around 100. Following more pressure about 6 months later, LU carried out the Transfer exercise again (which should be continualy happening anyway), which reduced the numbers even further to around 80 O.E.S. The current number of O.E.S CSA stands at about 60 with around 20 SAMF and 15 SS but if you took the number of vacancies across the combine it equates to more than the current number of O.E.S.

Promotions are about as rare as rocking horse shit on LU at the moment and with the upcoming plans they could get even rarer, so it is vital that staff check their positions on waiting lists of places they have nominated and call those locations where they are no 1 on the list to see if that position is vacant, if it is contact your Rep’s as T&P’s should constantly be happening and you as an individual should not lose out because of somebody's cock up. If LU’s Station & Revenue staff were to work to the same standards at which Resources and other LU departments seam to be operating with we’d all be signing on tomorrow! They are a joke and our members shouldn’t bear the brunt of their cowboy operation, demand results and get the Transfer and/or Promotions you are entitled to!