- Conference
- 2024 Water, Environment & Transport Conference
- Date
- 16 February 2024
- Decision
- Carried
This conference notes the increase in the outsourcing of various services from the Environment Agency (EA) to external companies and to the Defra Group services.
The consequences of this appears to be that these services are unfit for purpose, inefficient, and often lead to the creep of Defra terms and conditions of employment into the EA with no, or only limited, trade union negotiation, with there being no UNISON recognition in Defra.
An example of such an outsourced service is Defra’s Shared Services (SSCL) which is a service used to manage and provide HR, payroll and finance functions across Defra and associated Arm’s-length bodies (ALB) in which the Environment Agency is part of.
Conference believes that apart from the impact on services provided for our members in their employment, our members are directly affected as most of these contractors are non-unionised, preventing TUPE’d members access to meaningful union support and representation when they need it. There is also reputational damage to the employer and additional stress on our members in the EA.. In addition, in supporting members across the EA as they deal with problems linked to Defra sourced providers, there has been an increase in UNISON reps workload, at a time when our reps are already busy.
Therefore, this Conference calls upon the WET Service Executive group, to:
A. Carry out research into this practice and gather information on the impact of outsourcing on service provision and operating costs;
B. Use this information to engage with EA management on the likely benefits and costs of bringing the services back in-house;
C. Investigate ways of mitigating the impact of outsourcing on jobs, pay, and terms and conditions
D. Explore how the outcomes of this research can be prioritised to implement a compelling case for insourcing and related change.