Exclusive: Uncertain future for #StDavidsHall staff

Staff at St David’s Hall face an uncertain future. That’s the message from a question and answer session at Cardiff council, which took place on 12 January.

Cllr Joel Williams questioned Anita Batten, a senior HR official and Neil Hanratty, the director of economic development at Cardiff council.

Here are the key points:

• AMG could seek to change staff’s employment rights and pension arrangements if there is an economic, operational or technical need to do so (see pars 2 and 8 below)

• Casual staff and agency staff current pay, terms and conditions may not be protected at all (see par 3 below)

• Council officers refuse to deny that the new owners could sack workers in the future and cut their pay, terms and conditions if the company doesn’t make a profit in future (pars 6-10 below)

• Despite promoting the change, Cardiff council don’t even know whether AMG is a Living Wage employer (par 12 below)

The UNISON trade union branch for Cardiff Council, which represents workers at the Hall responded as follows:

“Our preference is that the national concert theatre of Wales stays out of the private sector. However we acknowledge the difficult budgetary decisions that Cardiff Council are faced with and we would like the Welsh Government to step in with a financial solution.

“We have been working with the council to ensure that the best possible deal is in place for any transferred staff, based on employment law and the council's own policies. However, employment law rarely sides with workers and TUPE offers only thin protection to St David's Hall staff.”

Here is a full transcript, taken by Cardiff Civic Society of the relevant section from the economic and culture scrutiny committee’s session on St David’s Hall:

1:06:58

1. Cllr Joel Williams:  A question for Anita as our operational manager in HR.  Can you discuss with me some of the TUPE arrangements in place for officers that will TUPE over should this proposal go ahead? [TUPE are a set of regulations which protects workers rights when ownership of the business transfers and means that workers’ terms of employment automatically transfer as well].  Importantly the rights of existing employees: is there any possibility that after the first twelve months of the TUPE period that AMG could vary the rights of existing officers at St David’s Hall and could you touch on the pension arrangements for existing officers?  Am I right in saying that AMG would be within their rights to amend the existing pension arrangements?  

1:07:33

2. Anita Batten: In terms of the TUPE arrangements, we have a track record in terms of TUPE employees out of the organisation and also TUPE in.  Terms and conditions that would be protected .  The terms and conditions will be protected until and if there is any reason that the other organisation under economic, operational or technical reasons would need to go through any process of change.  The arrangements will be in place at the point of transfer.  

3. We have core establishment at St David’s Hall of permanent employees who would obviously transfer at that point.  We also have an establishment of temporary employees whose contracts may go beyond any transfer date.  Those employees will also transfer.  And we are looking very closely at the implications for casual workers and agency workers.  Looking at agency workers in the first place, the council, earlier this year, agreed to an agency workers fair work policy, which looks at the length of engagement of agency workers and in particular we’ll be looking at those who’ve had continuous engagement with an agency for four years plus. One of the important things there is the type of the engagement, and the frequency of that engagement.  So it is not straightforward.  We are looking at every individual agency worker.  We are working very closely with the management team at St David’s Hall to establish the record of engagement of those agency workers.  And also there is a pool of casual workers who are on the council’s payroll and we are looking at the nature of their employment, because they are employees and to assess whether or not they themselves have accrued any employment rights.

4. As far as the pension arrangements are concerned we have a combination of two things working here.  We’ve got the TUPE legislation, we’ve also got the code of practice on workforce matters in Wales, which is a Welsh government piece of legislation.  What the code does is that the transfer of the employees for the existing workforce would transfer with their local government pension scheme, if we can get AMG/Live Nation to enter into ‘admitted body status’ with the local government pension scheme.  That happened under previous TUPE arrangements; it happens frequently with other employees who were within the council workforce.  

5. What the code of practice also says is that the new employees should be offered a comparable arrangement.  Now that does need to be looked into further as to whether or not those future employees would be eligible for the local government pension scheme or a comparable scheme.  That’s something we would need to work through with AMG.

1:11:09

6. Joel:  You touched upon the TUPE arrangements and the new provider, AMG, could seek to change employment rights and pension arrangements if there is an economic, operational or technical need to do so.  Can you just clarify because for me, and I’m sure for many of the officers at St David’s Hall, the anxiety surrounds them.  We’re subsidising at present St David’s Hall to the tune of £1m a year.  The question many people will be asking is what are AMG going to do differently to deliver a surplus, so to speak, so on that basis, if AMG come in and after twelve months find that “we’re running this place at a loss; it’s just a real struggle”, would they then be able to go in an amend employment rights, including pension arrangements?  

1:11:59

7. Anita: I do need to clarify that the pension arrangements are contractual so they would be protected under TUPE so we wouldn’t be looking at any change to those pension arrangements post TUPE transfer.  

8. Pay scales are part of the TUPE transfer certainly, at a point [in time] though.  That is something another organisation could look at, as far as changes to terms and conditions.  They could also look at the staff structure. So, the staff transferring in, but at point in time, in future, if they felt they wanted to restructure they’d have to go though a process to do so.  However, if they know now that they need to restructure, that needs to be built into a consultation we need to have with the workforce before any formal decisions are actually taken.  

1:13:00

9. Joel:  What information have we shared with AMG about the cause of this £1m surplus that the council is putting in.  Because the concerns I’ve got is that we could have AMG come in; they take it on and they say, after twelve months, “you know what, we don’t need all of these staff on our books, we’ll sack them all and then we’ll bring in agency, as when we need to.”  And on that point, have we got assurance that AMG will be a Living Wage employer?  

10. Neil Hanratty:  So on the issue of the £1m subsidy, the classical programme is subsidised at the moment at £1.8m all in, so that’s where the subsidy is at the moment.  The issue is, all the other events that at are done at St David’s Hall … don’t generate enough commercial profit to off set against.  And what AMG will do better is have more commercial events alongside the classical programme and generate more surplus that can pay for the classical programme.  That’s their intention.  

11. Joel: [off mic and off camera]  And what about the Living Wage?

12. Hanratty:  I don’t actually know the answer to the question but I can find out for you.  

Cllr Russell Goodway and Cllr Jennifer Burke-Davies, cabinet members were also on the panel but chose not to add anything to these answers. No other councillors raised the future of the staff at St David’s Hall during the public question and answer session.