UNISON - East of England Ambulance Branch

Colleagues below follows a statement that I as Branch Secretary have been asked to release on behalf of the senior officers who were involved in the negotiations regarding the ‘goodwill’ payment of monies to staff on student paramedic or UEA Certificate Programme. 

If you are a Unison member on either the (2/3yr) Student Ambulance Paramedic or UEA Certificate programme pathway you will have by now received a letter from the Trust advising that the “goodwill” payment which formed part of the progression pathway agreement has been included in this month’s salary. 

Whilst all staff side acknowledge that this is not the outcome that all affected parties would have sought, we do believe that this agreement is the best that could have been achieved given the many factors involved and brings the matter to a conclusion. 

This outcome, alongside the earlier reimbursement of student course fees has been the product of a long process during which staffside has engaged with the employer and reviewed issues raised within grievances relating to the paramedic pathway in order to achieve the very best outcome for our members.

The latest round of engagement began when senior staff side officers, Barry Jarvis and Jackie Robinson met with the Directors of Finance, Paul Scott and Business Transformation & HR, Lesley Bradley in the lead up to Christmas 2010. Both sides expressed a wish to find a way forward in respect of getting the students through their pathways and onto registration if successful and meetings continued into the New Year and up to the present day.

 The discussions focused on issues identified through student feedback and associated with the collective and/or individual grievances. In conjunction with this, detailed research was undertaken into the numbers affected, their specific pathway choice (i.e. SAP or UEA Cert), their current progression status and the reason for the delays, if not related to the Trust’s own failure to facilitate course placements.

This work combined with the ongoing discussions led to the following series of proposals being submitted to the Trust board and branch’s Executive Committee for consideration;

• Dates of future Module 7 courses will be agreed nine months in advance. If unforeseen circumstances require cancellation of a course, a fallback plan will be agreed. 
•  Students who have been confirmed as having achieved Modules 1 – 6 will be prioritised for Module 7 courses based on the length of time they have been waiting, as opposed to whether they have any contractual requirement to have completed the previous modules by a given date.  
• The Trust will look into flexible study options for the longer term.  
• The requirement for a specified length of service as a paramedic to be eligible for certain roles will be reviewed to determine whether the required length of service is justifiable and, if not, to what extent it could be replaced or reduced.  
• EMTs who would prefer to withdraw from the programme than continue to qualification will be able to revert to an EMT role. However, there will be no guarantee of returning to their previous location or post.  
• As a gesture of goodwill, and in acknowledging that the Trust could have addressed some of the underlying issues earlier and therefore reduced the impact of delays on most students, a one-off payment is being considered for those students who have been delayed through no result of their own actions. 

The Trust made it very clear that, having sought legal advice there would be NO compensatory payments made although staffside sought to negotiate a higher “goodwill” figure for the students. However, having been told that this was the absolute maximum available for this particular case, staffside were then left to negotiate the fairest means of apportioning what was available to those affected.

Staffside’s decision was that due to the numbers involved, it would be fairest to share this out amongst the greatest number of students as possible - even if that meant a lesser amount overall per head. This resulted in a figure equating to 50% of the salary that would have been payable had the student/ cohort proceeded to qualification in the quickest possible time. We also had it on good (non-Trust) authority that 50% would be considered reasonable from a negotiating viewpoint.

Staffside are aware that the temptation will be for students to focus on the financial aspect in isolation but wish to stress the importance of considering the individual components in conjunction with each of their counterpart offers because these were all elements consistently identified as being the key issues for the affected students.

We would like to end by reiterating our position on this matter which is that all things considered, we remain of the opinion that this agreement is the best that could have been achieved given the circumstances and factors involved.

If staff have any queries or questions these should be directed to either of the staff side involved in the negotiations as they are best placed to provide staff with clarity over any concerns.

Barry Jarvis                                                                             Jackie Robinson

Branch Convenor                                                                    Membership Secretary and Interim Herts County Lead

Gary Applin

Branch Secretary

UNISON East of England Ambulance Service Branch 20106